Kurosawa Update

I was planning on pasting together a full list of Kurosawa's films and my progress through his films, but I see I did this over 10 years ago!  So I will just go back to that list and update there.  Interestingly, back then (2013), I had said I had only seen Ran and Dreams on the big screen, though I am fairly sure I actually had seen Rashomon as well at the Film Forum in NYC but had blanked on it at the time.  At any rate, even if I had missed it back then, I saw it at the Revue last March.  So this implies that I had only watched Ikiru on video up until that point, and I will see Ikiru over at The Revue tonight in a new restoration.  I adored this the first time, but was much less taken the second time.  Let's see how I feel tonight after the third go-around.

Having watched The Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai and Stray Dog over the weekend at the Revue, I am up to 15 (of 30 films), with 2 more films new to me to come this week (Throne of Blood and Sanjuro).  It looks like I will then have managed to watch all or nearly all of his samurai films, depending on if one includes the late film, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior.

I will say that after this major festival, I will have seen pretty much all of his best films (and on the big screen!) with the possible exception of The Bad Sleep Well and perhaps Red Beard.  (I think The Bad Sleep Well may have come around to the Paradise or more likely Tiff, but I just couldn't make it, so I will keep my eyes open for it if it comes around again.) 

As I mentioned way back when, I have the massive Kurosawa box set, which includes 25 of his 30 films.  It is pretty amazing, though sadly it is very bare bones, aside from a nice book that comes along with it.  I have to say, it really is a shame that It is Wonderful to Create (a 21 part documentary on Kurosawa specifically for his films for Toho Studios) was not made available on the box set.  One thing that I probably should do, especially as I do own Ran and Ikiru, is borrow the other DVDs with special features and just rip this into one place.  I will go back to the original post and make notes on which DVDs I would need to borrow to achieve this.  This sounds like a potential fall/winter project.  However, it will probably never be complete, as the episodes that correspond with movies that came out on the "budget" Eclipse series never had the documentary bonus features at all.  It really is surprising that Toho Studio won't license the whole thing to Janus.  I'm sure enough there would be plenty of buyers if it came out by itself on Blu-Ray or something.*

One other note about the box set is that 5 films are missing, mostly his later ones.  The ones not on the box are The Quiet Duel, Dersu Uzala, Ran, Dreams and Rhapsody in August.  Ran is certainly the most significant omission, but I wish the box had Dreams and Rhapsody in August as well.  I own a copy of Ran (picked up when it was only a bit OOP and not extremely expensive) and Dreams.  I believe I sourced Dersu Uzala and Rhapsody in August as well, though I will need to dig around to find them.  It turns out that Robarts has a copy of The Quiet Duel, so I requested that.

As it happens I had planned to go through the whole box back in 2013/14 (while I was on my own in Vancouver), but that didn't happen.  I actually don't remember much about those early films.  I think I did think No Regrets for Our Youth had some similarities to Bergman's Wild Strawberries, but that may be completely off-base.  I do recall that I thought the ending of One Wonderful Sunday was completely inane, though that wasn't why I stopped the project.  I just got busy with work. 

Maybe I will see if I can watch Drunken Angel and then The Quiet Duel** when I pick it up from Robarts.  I also would really like to watch Rhapsody in August before August is over!  (Speaking of work interfering with pleasure, I suspect the reason I didn't see Rhapsody in August when it came out in 1991 was that it was released in the US in Dec. 1991, and I was just barely keeping my head above water as a new teacher in Newark.  It would have been playing in Manhattan but certainly not anywhere where I was living.  Still a bit of a missed opportunity...)   Then this fall and winter, I may start making my way through the rest of the films.  It would be down to 10 or so remaining, which isn't so incredibly daunting. 

* Another fantasy wish project would be if the original cut of The Idiot was made available.  Apparently, Kurosawa delivered a 4+ hour movie of the whole novel which was then hacked down to under 3 hours (shades of Welles and The Magnificent Ambersons).  One can only dream. 

** Well, this is most amusing.  I tracked down Rhapsody in August, which I indeed own.  But it turns out I have a copy of The Quiet Duel as well!  I might as well leave my request in place to see if the Robarts copy has different bonus features.  I thought I had a region-free copy of Dersu Uzala, but maybe not.  It looks like there is a version from Kino floating about and is at the TPL, so I'll just request that as well.  What makes this even a bit droller, is that as I was putting the books back (my DVDs are mostly hidden behind the books), I ran across De Filippo's Four Plays, which I had assumed was in a box in the basement, but is actually a compact version up on the main floor.  So another mystery solved...