Kurosawa's Other Film List

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

Kurosawa's Second List of Films

The first list, in Gama no abura - jiden no you na mono $B2\j1$NL}!'<+EA$N$h$&$J$b(B
$B$N(B/SLAO, only covers films released through 1929, and was likely compiled at 
the time Gama no abura was written (first published serially in Shukan Yomiuri, 
Mar-Sep 1975). Gama no abura was added to and revised a bit in 1984.

The second list, $B9u_7L@$,A*$s$@I4K\$N1G2h(B, Kurosawa Akira's Pick of 100 Films, 
was first published, posthumously, in the Apr 1999 issue of Bungei Shunju. It 
was reprinted in $B9u_7L@!'L4$OE7:M$G$"$k(B Kurosawa Akira - Yume wa tensai de 
aru, a posthumous tribute book, largely edited by Kurosawa's daughter Kazuko 
(Tokyo: Bungei Shunju Sha, Aug 1999), 166-205. The list also includes a lot of 
detailed film commentary, supplied by Kurosawa Kazuko, based on her 
recollections of film viewing, and talking about films, with her father.

The second list was designed to be a "lifetime top-pick" list, unlike the SLAO list 
of all the films he'd remembered seeing that specially impressed Kurosawa, 
released from 1919, when he was 9, until 1929 - ten years of films.

It's interesting that no early Russian films are included in the later list, nor are 
the two early John Ford films in the SLAO list. I believe the only Russian films are 
Ivan the Terrible I (and also II, listed in the Japanese text), and Solaris. John 
Ford's postwar "Clementine" made it in.

Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is the favorite for 1982. I believe Mark Kermode 
has regarded Herzog as an interesting storyteller - at least verbally, in his BBC 
radio film reviews.

You can find just the list itself, without any of the accompanying 40 pages of 
Japanese film discussion text, at:

http://www.listal.com/list/akira-kurosawas-favorite-films

- kindly put together and illustrated by a Finnish film student, going by the 
name of Lamourhaaja.

http://lamourhaaja.listal.com/

It's very interesting to compare this list with the earlier one. and see what is and 
is not on both lists. 

Best Regards To All,

mmcc

PS

I also tend to doubt that Kurosawa really saw Potemkin. It's odd though, that 
he'd put it on his published list, since he surely must have known that Potemkin 
was not (at least officially) shown  in Japan until three decades later. So he was 
likely to be caught out, especially by readers of the magazine Shukan Yomiuri - 
unless the list wasn't put in until Gama no abura came out in book form later.

But, since Kurosawa s a y s he saw it way back when, I'm going to use that 
statement as grounds to include just the Odessa Steps sequence for my students 
(mostly to see for the first time), while letting them know Kurosawa may not 
really have seen this back then at all.

As someone reared in infancy on jars of Gerber Baby Food that got around Kobe 
and Yokohama Customs (statute of limitations now), though, it still seems 
possible to me that some people in Japan saw Potemkin back in the day, even 
so.