Shall We Dance - Prologue

[Carole Cavanaugh]

Did Suou say what the alterations were? I saw the film in the U.S. in
August and the opening scene in the Japanese video I have seems the same.
If there is any contextualization it would seem to be for a Japanese
audience. The voice-over explains the European origins of
ballroom dancing, shakou dansu. There's a quotation from Shakespeare and
one from Adam Smith. As David Desser points out, the scene of apparently
British dancers is reprised later in the film. Did Suou give any details?

Carole Cavanaugh
Middlebury College
On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Alan Makinen wrote:

> Kerry Smith wrote:
> 
> > In discussions during the Modern Japan History Workshop at 
> > Harvard this past weekend,  someone pointed out that the version 
> > of _Shall We Dance_ now appearing in U.S. theatres  begins with a 
> > scene of what one viewer assumed was a European ballroom and a 
> > brief commentary on Japanese attitudes
> > towards humor and the public display of affection.  
> > The commentary pointed out that Japanese are comfortable with 
> > neither humor nor public displays of affection.
> > 
> > I'm guessing that this contextualization was added to the film for its
> > foreign release.  Is this a correct assumption?
> 
> In May, when the director was here in Chicago at the Film Center to
> promote the film, he said, in reply to an audience member's question,
> that the introductory sequence of the film had indeed been altered from
> the Japanese version to provide cultural context for foreign viewers.
> 
> -- 
>         
> Alan Makinen
> Chicago
> 
>