Davis' review of Richie Book

[Mark Nornes]

Darrell Davis has a (as always) thoughtful review of the new Donald 
Richie book in Senses of Cinema 
(http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/20/hundred_japanese.html). 
Here's a peek:

There is something overdetermined about Donald Richie's rhetorical 
strategy, his desire to bring contemporary cinema back in touch with the 
prehistory of a century-old heritage. This heritage, ?this need for an 
authoritative and Japanese voice? is one which Richie himself has done 
much to define. (Example: in the final pages he brings together Loyal 
Forty-Seven Ronin with Neon Genesis: Evangelion.) Richie's strategy is 
highly imaginative and expertly crafted, as if he were himself the 
benshi of Japanese cinema, but as he admits, his conclusions are 
speculative, only a provisional resolution. It remains for others to 
propose new models to account for the now-rapidly accumulating cultural 
capital of Japanese film, whatever forms it takes.

The book and its review reminds us that after the long critique of 
"tradition" and cinema, we have yet to find a comfortable model to talk 
about the weight or inertia of the past and the various 
stylistic/narrative differences of Japanese silent cinema.

Markus


A. M. Nornes
Kinema Club	
http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
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