Thanks and New Question re Kurosawa's "Quiet Duel"

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

Dear Prof. Martinez,

You are of course completely right about "Rhapsody in August" - I think it may 
be a more purposefully intense follow-up of Kurosawa's way earlier (1955) "I 
Live in Fear/Ikimono no kiroku." As if he had to wait 36 years before he felt free 
to present these issues again.

In the case of "Quiet Duel," here are some interesting reviews of the 2006 first 
English-subtitled DVD release of this 1949 film.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/24089/quiet-duel-the/

http://oldschoolreviews.com/rev_40/quiet_duel.htm

http://www.cinelogue.com/reviews/the-quiet-duel

The 2006 DVD seems well worth getting. I'm eager to watch the copy I ordered 
of this apparently ever-scarcer DVD release. There does not seem to be any DVD 
version at all for any other European language constituency.

My idea is to make some comparisons with Wolfgang Staudte's 1946 film "Die 
Mörder sind unter uns" (The Murderers Among Us).

http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0038769/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderers_Among_Us

It's hard to get on DVD as well, but I've had a copy for a long time. In both the 
Kurosawa and Staudte films, a sinister figure from the war (each sinister for 
different reasons) remains on the loose. The Kurosawa character has become a 
gangster, to top it off, who continues to be openly odious - unlike the more 
covert villain in Staudte's film.

The idea of a syphilitic petty-criminal war veteran turned postwar gangster may 
not have been popular with everyone in  Japan - though there is a fine Japanese 
DVD version available.

The growing rareness of "Dreams" on DVD remains a puzzle. There is a nice 
"Dersu Uzala" DVD available.

Regards,

Michael (McC)