Murnau`s influence ?

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Eija asked,

>Hi! I am taking a class on Murnau here at UCLA, and noticed that a couple of
>writers mention, that Murnau's cinematic style might have influenced
>Kurosawa. I myself noticed a similarity in the camera style of Sunrise (the
>beginning where the man walks to meet the city woman) and Rashomon (the
>woodcutter walks into the wood): in both these films the camera keeps on
>moving so that the viewer gets an impression that the character is walking
>in a circle. Do you people on this list know anything about Murnau`s
>influence on Japanese cinema? Is there anything written on Murnau by
>Japanese writers? 

Since I just finished writing a monograph on Kinugasa Teinosuke's 
_Kurutta ichipeiji_ (_A Page of Madness_), I can can tell you that one of 
the most celebrated films of 1926 in Japan was Murnau's _The Last Laugh_. 
 Almost every magazine at the beginning of the year had an article or two 
on the film.  In this context, many took Kinugasa's decision not to use 
intertitles as an influence from _The Last Laugh_ (also a titleless film) 
and noted the similarities with Murnau's use of lens and optical effects.

For one Japanese source discussing the influence of Murnau on Japanese 
film (and one of the main ones for discussing all such influences from 
foreign cinema), there is Yamamoto Kikuo's _Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikoku 
eiga no eikyo_ (Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1983).


Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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