Mizoguchi and neo-realism
Aaron Gerow
aaron.gerow at yale.edu
Sun Jun 10 21:17:01 EDT 2007
Just a note on thinking about "influences."
Considering the availability of films is very important (there are a
lot of sloppy mistakes out there that result from lazy research), but
one must also consider the issue of published information. For
instance, one could say that, given how many Soviet films were censored
in prewar Japan, the influence of Soviet montage on Japanese cinema was
as much due to published articles and translations as to the films
themselves. In considering the neo-realist example, one must not only
look at release dates for films, but also the film magazines at the
time and see if anyone was introducing this cinema. Remember that they
need not have seen the movies: there were many in the world of film
journalism who were multi-lingual and would often read the foreign film
magazines, thus writing articles based on those.
That said, the comment about domestic "realist" traditions is also very
important, but this again should also extend to the realm of film
criticism and theory. Imamura Taihei was of course the primary
proponent of realism in the prewar and wartime years, but some of
Sugiyama Kohei's writings are practically Bazinian and Hase Masato has
compared (somewhat problematically) Tsumura Hideo to the spirit of the
French New Wave. Do not forget that many directors had close
relationships with film critics, and often wrote pieces about film
themselves.
Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
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