Author: Tadao Sato
Publisher: Berg Publishers
ISBN: 9781847882301
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the three acclaimed masters - together with Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa - of Japanese cinema. Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema is the definitive guide to the life and work of one of the greatest film-makers of the twentieth century.Born at the end of the nineteenth century into a wealthy family, Mizoguchi's early life influenced the themes he would take up in his work. His father's ambitious business ventures failed and the family fell into poverty. His mother died and his elder sister was obliged to enter a geisha house to support the family. Her earnings paid for Mizoguchi's education. Weak and deluded men and strong, self-sacrificing women - these were to become the obsessive motifs of Mizoguchi's films.Mizoguchi's apprenticeship in cinema was peculiarly Japanese. His concerns - the role of women and the realist representation of the inequities of Japanese society - were not. Through two World Wars, Japan's culture changed. Though censored, Mizoguchi continued to produce films. It was only in the 1950s that Mizoguchi's astonishing cinematic vision became widely known outside Japan.Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema tells the full story of this famously perfectionist, even tyrannical, director. Mizoguchi's key films, cinematographic techniques and his social and aesthetic concerns are all discussed and set in the context of Japan's changing popular and political culture.
Author: Tadao Sato
Publisher: Berg Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the three acclaimed masters--together with Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa--of Japanese cinema. Ten years in the making, Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema is the definitive guide to the life and work of one of the greatest film-makers of the 20th century. Born at the end of the 19th Century into a wealthy family, Mizoguchi's early life influenced the themes he would take up in his work. His father's ambitious business ventures failed and the family fell into poverty. His mother died and his beloved sister was sold into a geisha house. Her earnings paid for Mizoguchi's education. Weak and deluded men, and strong, self-sacrificing women--these were to become the obsessive motifs of Mizoguchi's films. Mizoguchi's apprenticeship in cinema was peculiarly Japanese. His concerns--the role of women and the realist representation of the inequities of Japanese society--were not. Through two World Wars, Japan's culture changed. Though censored, Mizoguchi continued to produce films. It was only in the 1950s that Mizoguchi's astonishing cinematic vision became widely known outside Japan. Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema tells the full story of this famously perfectionist, even tyrannical, director. Mizoguchi's key films, cinematographic techniques and his social and aesthetic concerns are all discussed and set in the context of Japan's changing popular and political culture.
Author: Mark Le Fanu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838717161
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
For a majority of filmgoers, the names most usually associated with classic Japanese cinema are those of Kurosawa and Ozu. Yet during the early 1950s, at the same time that Kurosawa was becoming known to the public through the release of classics like Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, another Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi, quietly came out with a trilogy of films - The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho the Bailiff - that are the equal of Kurosawa's in mastery, and which by any account rank among the greatest and most enduring masterpieces of world cinema. As a storyteller, Mizoguchi was drawn to the plight and oppression of women throughout the ages - it was, for him, the 'subject of subjects'. So in addition to the movies just mentioned, he is remembered for a string of masterly contemporary films that examined, with unprecedented candour and ferocity, the conditions of life in Japanese brothels and geisha houses. Yet, as well as being a moralist. Mizoguchi was a stylist. His films are considered by critics to be among the most beautiful ever made, from a purely pictorial point of view. Filmgoers who have responded enthusiastically in recent years to Chinese classics like Farewell My Concubine or to the colourful works of Zhang Yimou will be delighted to discover 'pre-echoes' of this cinema in such late films by this Japanese master as The Empress Yang Kwei Fei and Tales of the Taira Clan (both released in 1955) works in which colour, costume and decor are deployed with compelling refinement. Despite his extraordinary qualities as a film-maker, Mizoguchi and Japan is the first full -length study in English for over 20 years of a director whose work is as vibrant now as it ever was in its heyday, and whom the French film review Cahiers du Cinema recently hailed 'the greatest of all cineastes.' Mark Le Fanu's preface to the new ebook edition - https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/revised-mizoguchi-and-japan-preface.docx A Retrospective to the 2008 edition - https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/mizoguchi-and-japan-retrospect.doc
Author: Joseph L. Anderson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691187460
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 527
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Book Description
Tracing the development of the Japanese cinema from 1896 (when the first Kinetoscope was imported) through the golden ages of film in Japan up to today, this work reveals the once flourishing film industry and the continuing unique art of the Japanese film. Now back in print with updated sections, major revaluations, a comprehensive international bibliography, and an exceptional collection of 168 stills ranging over eight decades, this book remains the unchallenged reference for all who seek a broad understanding of the aesthetic, historical, and economic elements of motion pictures from Japan.
Author: Alexander Jacoby
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press
ISBN: 1611725313
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
This important work fills the need for a reasonably priced yet comprehensive volume on major directors in the history of Japanese film. With clear insight and without academic jargon, Jacoby examines the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching. Included are artistic profiles of everyone from Yutaka Abe to Isao Yukisada, including masters like Kinji Fukasaku, Juzo Itami, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Yoji Yamada. Each entry includes a critical summary and filmography, making this book an essential reference and guide. UK-based Alexander Jacoby is a writer and researcher on Japanese film.
Author: Noël Burch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520038776
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Author: Donald Richie
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
Donald Richie, whose earlier works have done so much to introduce Japanese cinema to the West, has here written the first introduction to Japanese film. Written in a highly accessible style, this up-to-date history offers a study of those qualities which make a film distinctly Japanese. It will be an invaluable resource to students of film appreciation, as well as to readers with an interest in Japan.
Author: Catherine Russell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441107770
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
Catherine Russell's highly accessible book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modeled on Hollywood, focusing on the classical period - those years in which the studio system dominated all film production in Japan, from roughly 1930 to 1960. Respectful and thoroughly informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies, and her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Russell locates Japanese cinema within a global system of reception, and she highlights the importance of the industrial production context of these films. Including studies of landmark films by Ozu, Kurosawa and other directors, this book provides a perfect introduction to a crucial and often misunderstood area of Japanese cultural output. With a critical approach that highlights the "everydayness" of Japanese studio-era cinema, Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics.
Author: Yomota Inuhiko
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549482
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
What might Godzilla and Kurosawa have in common? What, if anything, links Ozu’s sparse portraits of domestic life and the colorful worlds of anime? In What Is Japanese Cinema? Yomota Inuhiko provides a concise and lively history of Japanese film that shows how cinema tells the story of Japan’s modern age. Discussing popular works alongside auteurist masterpieces, Yomota considers films in light of both Japanese cultural particularities and cinema as a worldwide art form. He covers the history of Japanese film from the silent era to the rise of J-Horror in its historical, technological, and global contexts. Yomota shows how Japanese film has been shaped by traditonal art forms such as kabuki theater as well as foreign influences spanning Hollywood and Italian neorealism. Along the way, he considers the first golden age of Japanese film; colonial filmmaking in Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan; the impact of World War II and the U.S. occupation; the Japanese film industry’s rise to international prominence during the 1950s and 1960s; and the challenges and technological shifts of recent decades. Alongside a larger thematic discussion of what defines and characterizes Japanese film, Yomota provides insightful readings of canonical directors including Kurosawa, Ozu, Suzuki, and Miyazaki as well as genre movies, documentaries, indie film, and pornography. An incisive and opinionated history, What Is Japanese Cinema? is essential reading for admirers and students of Japan’s contributions to the world of film.
Author: Linda C. Ehrlich
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292720879
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
On Chinese and Japanese art and cinema.
