Inquiry Concerning Japanese Remakes of American Films

[David Desser]

In my anthology on Ozu's 'Tokyo Story,' Arthur Nolletti is at great pains to 
demonstrate how Ozu's film "borrows" from Leo McCarey's 'Make Way for 
Tomorrow.'  In my essay "From the Opium War to the Pacific War: Japanese 
Propaganda Films of World War II"   Film History, 7, 1 (1995), I discuss 
Makino Masahiro's 'Ahen Senso' as a pretty clear remake of Griffith's 
'Orphans of the Storm'-- an interesting move on a filmmaker's part to remake 
a Hollywood film during a time when Hollywood films were banned in Japan.



I point these out as perhaps less well known examples, but considering the 
importance of 'Tokyo Story' and the idea of an anti-Western propaganda film 
being based on a Hollywood movie, I thought these might prove provocative.



David Desser





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael McCaskey" <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2005 2:14 PM
Subject: Inquiry Concerning Japanese Remakes of American Films


>I will be giving a comparative lecture on American remakes of Japanese 
>films soon, and am writing it up now. I have quite a lot of information on 
>this subject, from the present and the past, but as a comparison I tried to 
>think of significant Japanese remakes of American films, and came up with 
>little.
>
> Kurosawa made films based on MacBeth and King Lear, and apparently his 
> Wonderful Sunday film was based on an unexpected old D.W. Griffith film 
> about people trying to manage in Germany at the end of World War I. He 
> also sort of remade The Lower Depths, but not from an American model. Most 
> people, however, focus on the well-known American and Italian films that 
> were close Western Action remakes of his samurai films.
>
> There are instances of Japanese film makers borrowing themes, subplots, 
> etc., from American and European movies at times. There are probably also 
> cases where makers of low-grade Japanese gangster films, etc., borrowed 
> liberally from US B- or C-gangster movies, etc.
>
> But can anyone help me out with one or two examples of actual notable 
> Japanese remakes of notable American films that I can cite for comparison 
> in my lecture?
>
> Thank you in advance for any light you can shed.
>
> Michael McCaskey
> Georgetown Univ.
>
>
>