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KUROSAWA'S RASHOMON

Name: KUROSAWA'S RASHOMON
Author: Paul Anderer
ISBN: 978-1-68177-227-1

A VANISHED CITY, A LOST BROTHER, AND THE VOICE INSIDE HIS ICONIC FILMS

by Paul Anderer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2016

Perceptive insights about the mysterious heart of a legendary movie and its maker.

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A prismatic look at the esteemed filmmaker’s life.

In his masterpiece Rashomon (1950), Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) presents contradictory stories about a murder in 12th-century Japan, as told by several witnesses. For viewers, notes film scholar Anderer (Humanities/Columbia Univ.; editor: Literature of the Lost Home: Kobayashi Hideo—Literary Criticism, 1924-1939, 1995, etc.) in his sensitive investigation of Kurosawa’s life, the retellings create “a horrifying gap between our words and images about the world and the world itself.” The author successfully uses a strategy similar to Kurosawa’s in focusing on forces that shaped Kurosawa’s art, and a complicated, enigmatic, and unsettling portrait emerges. The filmmaker seemed determined to obscure his past; in his memoir, Something Like an Autobiography (1982), he never told “the whole story” about his family life, including his older brother, Heigo, who could be abusive and manipulative but also protective and nurturing. After a restless, rebellious adolescence, Heigo became a successful benshi, a performer who narrated silent movies, taking characters’ voices and adding “lyrical riffs, ironical asides, or mood-inducing groans, shrieks, and whispers.” He was “fanatical” about movies, taking his brother to see the black-and-white films of the 1920s that later indelibly inspired him. But Heigo’s influence went beyond aesthetics: in 1933, when movies incorporated sound, Heigo’s career was over. He led a strike, but when it failed, he killed himself. Reports of his suicide, however, were inconsistent, leaving Kurosawa to wonder if he had been despondent over work or a love affair; if he killed himself with his lover; if he had a child, and if the child lived or died. Anderer also traces other dark forces in Kurosawa’s life, including the great earthquake of 1923, which destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, and “the hollowed-out emptiness” of postwar Japan. The author gives enough details about Rashomon to suffice for readers who have not seen that film or others that he examines from Kurosawa’s oeuvre.

Perceptive insights about the mysterious heart of a legendary movie and its maker.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-68177-227-1

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.