Fwd: Seeking reviews on Hidden Fortress
Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow
onogerow
Fri Jan 16 20:57:30 EST 1998
>I am interested in the Kurosawa film, "Kakushi Toride no San Akunin",
>called "The Hidden Fortress" in English, and dating from 1958. I wonder if
>anyone could direct me to sources for reviews of this film. I would like
>to read Japanese and American review, to get a sense of how the
>film may have been appreciated differently by contemporaries.
>
>Thomas Bartlett
>La Trobe University
The easiest way to look up some contemporary reviews of films released in
the US is to check out the multi-volume _New York Times Film Reviews_ and
_Variety Film Reviews_. Both publications were fairly comprehensive in
their reviews even for foreign films.
For Japan, the first source is always _Kinema junpo_. _Kinema junpo_
publishes reviews and "introductions" (giving basic cast/credit and plot
information) on almost all films released in Japan. Right now, I only
have their index of introductions (in the _Nihon eiga sakuhin zenshu_
from 1973), which gives issue #217 (postwar numbering) as the intro issue
for _Kakushi_. The review should be in one of the couple issues before
or after that. (The six-volume 1961 Kinema Junpo _Nihon eiga sakuhin
zenshu_ does include a review citation for each film.)
Otherwise, for Japan, the only thing to do is to dig around the magazines
and newspapers from that time.
Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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