Publisher 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.

Notes

Also available in hardback, 9781847882318 GBP55.00 (June, 2008)

Author Biography

Tadao Sato is one of Japan's most prestigious film critics. He has written on many of the great masters of Japanese cinema - Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura - as well as on Asian and global cinema more generally. He is currently the President of the Japan Academy of Moving Images.Edited by Aruna Vasudev and Latika PadgaonkarTranslated from the Japanese by Brij Tankha

Table of Contents

1. An Original Spirit2. Encountering the New Theatre3. From New Theatre to Naturalism-Realism4. Social Realism -The Time of Leftist Films - Metropolitan Symphony5. The Fate of Matinee Idols6. Man Imitates Art in Life7. The Three Traditional Art (Geidomono) Films8. A Difficult Woman9. Recreating the Classics10. The Last Works11. The Dialectic of Camera and Performance12. Looking Up, Looking Down13. Yoda YoshikataChronology of Life and Work

Review

Kenji Mizoguchi was unquestionably one of the very greatest of all film-makers and now at last there is a book in English from a distinguished Japanese critic that tells us why. Few in the West have seen so many Mizoguchi films as Tadao Sato, nor studied them so deeply and with such sympathy. This is an invaluable book about a genius of the cinema. -- Derek Malcolm, Honorary President of the International Federation of Film Critics
One of the 20th century's greatest filmmakers. * New York Times (of Mizoguchi's work) *
On equal terms with Eisenstein, Griffith and Renoir. -- Jean-Luc Godard (of Mizoguchi's work)
The Japanese director I admire the most. -- Akira Kurosawa (of Mizoguchi's work)
No praise is too high for him. -- Orson Welles (of Mizoguchi's work)
He is capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life. -- Andrei Tarkovsky (of Mizoguchi's work)
The greatest of all cineastes. -- Cahiers du Cinema (of Mizoguchi's work)
Eschewing academic jargon, [Sato] proceeds chronologically and weaves together biographical information and film analysis... the material adds up to an informative overview of both Mizoguchi and the film industry within which he worked. Recommended. -- N. A. Baker, Earlham College * CHOICE *

Promotional

Also available in hardback, 9781847882318 GBP55.00 (June, 2008)

Review Quote

With Mizoguchi, form and idea, atmosphere and feeling are indivisible... his films are assembled out of images of breathtaking exactness...a world which irresistibly captures and enfolds the spectator

Description for Bookstore

Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the three acclaimed masters--together with Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa--of Japanese cinema. Ten years in the making,

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