Bordwell Ozu reprint

[Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano]

I totally agree with almost all you say Markus, but almost... At least, in
what have relation with my research in Ozu, Banshun, Bordwell has not
corrected the mistake he makes about the Noh play in the middle of the film:
it is Kakitsubata and not the one he says it is.

 

 

Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano

Dpto. Comunicación Audiovisual I

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

 

-----Mensaje original-----
De: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] En nombre de
amnornes at umich.edu
Enviado el: lunes, 08 de octubre de 2007 5:45
Para: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Asunto: Re: Bordwell Ozu reprint

 

Michael and David both beat me to this. I guess I better write 

something, but swiftly. The next film is starting in minutes.

 

I have to say, Bordwell's Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema is one of the 

best books on a single director i can think of. I sense that something 

clicked with David. Aside from the talents of both director and author, 

I suspect David found a strange and strong affinity with Ozu. Both love 

intricasy. Finding it in the world, in cinema, and building it into 

their respective works. There is great power in these close textual 

analyses. Many people had written on the major features of Ozu's style 

at the time of his writing. However, no one had unpacked the films with 

such care. I remained stunned at some of the analyses, the way they 

uncover the spectacular and peculiar logic built into his films. Aside 

from this, it is also one of best introductions to the potentials of 

Bordwell's historical poetics. I have found many of the criticisms of 

the book unconvincing, and often informed mostly by unreasonable 

expectations for what someone like Bordwell can (or should) do.

 

So I:m proud that I have had a hand in keeping the book alive. As David 

explains in his new introduction, which is definitely worth reading, 

the book went out of print and no press was interested in reviving a 

tome with some 500 images. We were, tho. Unfortunately, some 

entrepeneurial netizen discovered the draft site and it went public 

before we were ready. David had yet to write his introduction. And 

there were ongoing discussions about what to do about the photographs. 

This was Princeton's first book produced digitally, in pay layout 

software. This helps explain why the images are so grainy and hard to 

read. As you probably know, one impressive and precious aspect of his 

publications are the images----frames snapped in an analog fashion and 

not grabbed digitally. His original photos were of very high quality, 

but you'd never know it from the book.

 

So the new UM Center for Japanese Studies electronic reprint has 

replaced all the images with high quality scans----David went the extra 

mile and helped us with both the financing and actual scanning of these 

materials and we are forever grateful for this help. We also added 

color----why not? It's the internet and easy. On top of all of this, we 

decided to  play with a new interface developed by the people in our 

library (the same office that has been collaborating with Google for 

all these years). You will find tabs for each frame blow-up to the side 

of each page. If you click the tab, a window will open with a new 

interface allowing you to study the image at various sizes. You can 

also download it, or any page, or the entire book for that matter.

 

I'd like to thank David Bordwell for allowing us to republish his work 

and offer the book for free. It makes it all the easier to return to, 

search a key word, and also to assign to classes on Japanese cinema.

 

Enjoy!

 

Markus

 

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