Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema

by James Goodwin

Overview

In Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema, James Goodwin draws on contemporary theoretical and critical approaches to explore the Japanese director's use of a variety of texts to create films that are uniquely intertextual and intercultural. Surveying all of Kurosawa's films and examining six films in depth—The Idiot, The Lower Depths, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, and Ran—Goodwin finds in Kurosawa's themes and techniques the capacity to restructure perceptions of Western and Japanese cultures and to establish new meanings in each.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801846618
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/01/1993
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Goodwin is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

What People are Saying About This

David Desser

This is the first book that attempts to link his work to trends and issues that cut across national boundaries and transcend immediate historical circumstances. Extremely well written, well considered, and provocative, it moves Kurosawa's cinema into the realm of international culture where it belongs.

From the Publisher

This is the first book that attempts to link his work to trends and issues that cut across national boundaries and transcend immediate historical circumstances. Extremely well written, well considered, and provocative, it moves Kurosawa's cinema into the realm of international culture where it belongs.
—David Desser, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Editorial Reviews

Goodwin's analysis is most interesting in this account of how many Kurosawa plots (like Rashomon and Ikiru) feature a modernist competition between texts to argue a version of what 'really' happened.
—Journal of Asian Studies

A dense, theoretically sophisticated account of the intertextual nature of film as a medium. Goodwin discusses here, among other things, interculturality, the problematic notion of the auteur, and the dialogic production processes employed by Kurosawa. Above all, Kurosawa is described as a film-maker for whom life and art are always in the process of becoming, never static or singular.
—Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

From the Publisher

A dense, theoretically sophisticated account of the intertextual nature of film as a medium. Goodwin discusses here, among other things, interculturality, the problematic notion of the auteur, and the dialogic production processes employed by Kurosawa. Above all, Kurosawa is described as a film-maker for whom life and art are always in the process of becoming, never static or singular.

Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

Goodwin's analysis is most interesting in this account of how many Kurosawa plots (like Rashomon and Ikiru) feature a modernist competition between texts to argue a version of what 'really' happened.

Journal of Asian Studies

An inquiry into the form and meaning of Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa's work, bypassing previous criticism to comment directly on the signs and codes in the films and their interaction at and across various levels of understanding. Explores biographical influences, Russian themes, modernist narrative, and tragedy without heroes. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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