Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

Congratulations to yesterday’s winner, Matthew E. B.! Matthew’s pick for a “desert island” Kurosawa film was Ikiru, and here’s why:

If this movie is coming to a desert island with me, then I feel it shouldn’t necessarily be my favorite, but rather something that can provide me with the positive human influence that I am left without. This limits the choices, since so many of Kurosawa’s flicks are about swordplay and violence. Dreams would be a nice choice, but with so much surrealism, I’d look to something more based in everyday civilization. Therefore, I would have to select Ikiru because, while it does stand you alongside the downfalls and turmoils of the real world, it also presents you with a character so full of emotion, internal conflict, doubt, and redemption that, before I ever returned to civilization, I would have essentially GAINED experience in living.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Kurosawa was known for his adaptations of Western literature. Which novel or play do you most wish he had adapted?

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must reside in the U.S. or Canada and leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a DVD box set of Eclipse Series 7: Postwar Kurosawa).

Categories: Contests

More than a decade after his death in 1997, the moment is right for the rediscovery of the work of Marco Ferreri. “I think he’s modern. More than modern, in fact,” frequent collaborator Marcello Mastroianni once remarked, encapsulating how far ahead of his time the controversial and innovative director was. Though he enjoyed a prolific and successful career in Europe, turning out thirty-three films over nearly four decades, Ferreri’s idiosyncratic vision was so aesthetically and philosophically radical that he never made the name for himself among American audiences that his Italian art cinema contemporaries—Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Federico Fellini—did from the late fifties to the midseventies, the heyday of intellectual European imports. As unhesitatingly aggressive in his attacks on left-wing complacency as on right-wing repression, Ferreri pushed and challenged his audience instead of conforming to what was stylistically palatable or ideologically trendy. But times often catch up with forward-thinking artists ignored or misunderstood in their own eras, and the long-overdue appearance in the United States of Ferreri’s 1969 masterpiece Dillinger Is Dead—finally released, to great acclaim, in 2009—seems to have marked that moment for one of postwar Italian cinema’s great subversives.

Born in Milan in 1928, Ferreri began his career working with some of the most important names in postwar Italian cinema. In 1951, he produced a short documentary by Luchino Visconti about the rape and murder of a young girl, and in 1953 wrote and produced “Paradise for 4 Hours,” the Dino Risi segment of Love in the City, an omnibus film also featuring contributions from Fellini, Antonioni, and Cesare Zavattini. Ferreri then moved to Spain, where he directed his first features, including The Little Apartment (1959) and The Little Coach (1960), both cowritten with the man who would be his creative partner for years to come, Rafael Azcona. In these early films, the dark humor, caustic social satire, and surreal logic that would define Ferreri’s subsequent work are already fully developed, a sign of artistic maturity and courage all the more extraordinary for flaunting iconoclastic, antiauthoritarian ideas during the reign of Franco. Read more

Dillinger Is Dead

Marco Ferreri

1969

95 min

Color

1.66:1

Categories: Film Essays

Congratulations to Friday’s winner, Rick, and thanks for calling attention to an underappreciated film in response to our question about favorite Kurosawa remakes! It’s now in the Netflix queue of many a Criterion staffer. Here’s what Rick had to say:

The Outrage, starring Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson (oh, and Shatner’s in it, too). The concept of Rashomon has been used countless times (I’m quite fond of the X Files episode “Bad Blood” and the All in the Family episode when Archie and Meathead tell conflicting versions of the same story to explain what happened to the refrigerator), but The Outrage was an intentional remake of the Kurosawa film. The characters all give conflicting reports of a rape and murder in the American West. Great stuff.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

What would you pick as your “desert island” Kurosawa movie?

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must reside in the U.S. or Canada and leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a Dodes’ka-den DVD).

Categories: Contests

Congratulations to yesterday’s winner, Franciscus Rebro! Franciscus wrote this response to our question about favorite behind-the-scenes facts from the making of Kurosawa films:

My favorite behind-the-scenes anecdote about Kurosawa’s film involves the director’s relationship with the peerless Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who scored several Kurosawa films and hundreds of movies by less famous composers. While working on the score for Ran, Akira and Toru couldn’t agree over the music to use during the first incredible battle scene. Takemitsu wanted the music in this scene to be composed entirely from battle sound effects, like the cries of men and horses, explosions and gunshots, and other sounds not playable on traditional instruments. On the other hand, Kurosawa at the time was deeply inspired by the orchestral works of Mahler, and in the end the director would not budge on his position to use a heavy, emotionally moving string score in this battle. At the climax of the piece, all musical sounds suddenly cut out to silence, and a single fatal bullet is fired, killing one of Lord Hidetora’s sons in one of the most impacting moments of the film and arguably Kurosawa’s entire oeuvre.

As effective as the score ended up being, Takemitsu always lamented not being given full artistic control over that scene, and it would be fascinating to hear his original plan for it, which very likely would have sounded pretty radical, perhaps along the lines of his early experimental tape piece Sky, Horse and Death. Nevertheless, it’s a credit to Kurosawa that he was so unyielding in his artistic vision, and that the results are exquisite.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

What’s your favorite remake of a Kurosawa film?

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose a winner on Monday. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (an Ikiru DVD).

Categories: Contests

The monthlong Akira Kurosawa centennial celebrations continue with the release this week of Rizzoli’s gorgeously illustrated hardcover book Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema, written by frequent Criterion contributor Peter Cowie. Combining biography and analyses of the individual films, and containing more than two hundred images, this impressive tome is a fitting tribute to one of the defining film artists of the twentieth century. In anticipation of the book’s release, we asked Cowie to share his thoughts on the project and Kurosawa, whose imprint on international filmmaking remains indelible.

Why Kurosawa today? What makes him relevant on his hundredth anniversary?

Unlike Bergman, unlike Fellini, Kurosawa’s influence is perceptible in so much of contemporary cinema. For example, he pioneered those racing tracking shots that are now a staple of Hollywood and Asian cinema. Where would Ang Lee, John Woo, or Zhang Yimou be without the heritage of Kurosawa? Just as, in earlier decades, Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone learned from this master. Perhaps the most precious gift bestowed on the movies by Kurosawa, however, is his profound humanism—his understanding of human frailty, his compassion for that frailty. His work has a nobility, a heartfelt humility at man’s inability to live happily with his fellows, that’s sorely lacking in most new-millennium cinema. Read more

Ikiru

Akira Kurosawa

1952

143 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa

1954

207 min

1.33:1

Categories: Interviews

We were so impressed with the thoughtful, articulate answers supplied by so many Criterion fans in response to yesterday’s giveaway question that we felt we couldn’t pick just one favorite. We decided on seven winners (reproduced below). Congratulations to all of them! Read more

Categories: Contests

In 2009, Cinecittà, the legendary movie studio located on Rome’s suburban outskirts, celebrated its seventy-second anniversary. For the occasion, Cineaste’s associate editor Martha P. Nochimson ventured to Italy to explore Cinecittà’s hallowed halls for an excellent feature that’s in the magazine’s latest issue and is now available online—an in-depth and evocative portrait of a place that’s seen more than its share of turmoil over the past eight decades, including war, censorship, fire, and bankruptcy. Nochimson’s article details the origins of this “eternal studio in the Eternal City” (it was movie-mad Mussolini’s baby), its brief role as housing for people displaced by World War II, and its reemergence as a major site of spectacular movie projects, not only for Federico Fellini (whose La dolce vita, Amarcord, and And the Ship Sails On are just three of the many projects he filmed partly there) but also for Jean Renoir (The Golden Coach) and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor). In more recent years, such big-thinking filmmakers as Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) have utilized Cinecittà to realize their grand visions.

The Golden Coach

Jean Renoir

1953

103 min

Color

1.33:1

The Last Emperor

Bernardo Bertolucci

1987

160 min

2.00:1

Categories: Clippings

The conventional narrative of American documentary filmmaking generally jumps from 1922’s Nanook of the North to such exemplars of the sixties vérité revolution as the Maysles’s Salesman. Starting this week, Manhattan’s Anthology Film Archives attempts to fill in some of that gap with the retrospective Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film, which will shine a light on important nonfiction films made between 1931 and 1942 by a
group of radical New York artists. Hurwitz was the most influential of these; one of his films
that Anthology will be showcasing is the socially and politically charged 1942 semi-documentary Native Land, photographed by Paul Strand and narrated by Paul Robeson, which, as the program notes point out, “is finally being recognized as the crowning work in the early period of the American documentary.” Rarely screened, the lacerating exposé of everyday injustices in America is currently available from Criterion as part of the deluxe box set Paul Robeson: Portraits of The Artist. Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film runs now through March 19, with Native Land screening on March 12 and 16.

Native Land

Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand

1942

89 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Categories: News

Our hats are off to the people at Very Short List, who made the explosive connection between this week’s big Oscar winner The Hurt Locker and the 1948 Powell and Pressburger classic The Small Back Room. A wildly tense portrait of a professional bomb disposer at the end of his tether during World War II, The Small Back Room can give Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq actioner a run for its money in the sweaty palms department. And needless to say, as we’re talking about a Powell and Pressburger film, it’s got visual invention to spare.

The Small Back Room

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

1949

107 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Categories: Clippings

Congratulations to yesterday’s winners, Matt V and Kyle! Matt V’s Kurosawa-related anagram was:

Kagemusha = A Huge Mask

Kyle’s was:

Rashomon = Sham, or no?

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Among filmmakers working today, who can best be described as the heir to Kurosawa’s legacy, and why?

Please respond to this prompt by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (High and Low on DVD).

Categories: Contests