New Book: 映画評論の時代(E + J)

[Mark Nornes]

A new collection of criticism from Eiga Hyoron joins the volume from 
Kinema Junpo of a few years back. It's over 900 pages of articles 
culled from the magazine. This is one of my favorite film magazines in 
Japan. It was especially a stand-out before the 1960s, when there was a 
proliferation of other interesting journals. Eiga Hyoron started back 
in 1925 as a dojinshi in Sendai, and moved to Tokyo the following year. 
After this it was reconstituted several times, by wartime 
consolidations and economic problems after the war. The last 
incarnation started in 1950 and ran to 1975. Thanks to the seriousness 
of the writing from the very first issues, Eiga Hyoron can give you a 
pretty good sense for what was going on in a given year. The selection 
of articles here represent major films, incidents, and controversies 
that had some impact on the course of Japanese cinema, along with a 
nice smattering of interviews and zadankai with major directors. The 
book also has a long interview with Sato Tadao (one of the later 
editors), which is all over the place but is a pretty interesting 
discussion of postwar film criticism in general.

I wanted to draw particular attention to the "shiryo-hen" in the back 
of the book. OK, you may not care about the comparison of Eiga Hyron 
vs. Kinema Junpo Best Ten lists (although maybe you do, since this is a 
perennial topic on KineJapan) or the short bios of postwar critics (a 
modestly useful who's who); however, there is a 70-page index to the 
1950-1975 period which will be useful to anyone looking at this era.

My only real complaint is that the editors rather arbitrarily cover 
only the last incarnation of the magazine (1950 on). "Eiga Hyoron no 
jidai" would seem to be mostly Sato's "Eiga Hyoron no jidai."

Markus


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ISBN: 4-905943-52-3
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