I’ve never understood the interest (and financial value) society put on minor works by great artists, as even the greatest of geniuses have made some duds in their career
I find that often the minor or failed works can give me new insight into the artist’s objectively better output.
They also offer lots of interesting questions to ponder about and learn from. Why did a world class artist spend months or years of their time working on something that turned out a failure? Why did it fail? Did those failures affect their later works? And so on.
While they may not be as entertaining as the great masterpieces, in some cases failed works can actually be more fascinating.
]]>But I’ve always been a bit intrigued by what AK was up to during the war years, I always found his autobiography a bit shifty on that point. I don’t mean to say he was up to no good, but we know he wasn’t into personal revelation, and he seemed to be perhaps unnecessarily dismissive of those works he did when he didn’t have full control – No Regrets for our Youth being I think a good example – its one of my favourite AK films.
*maybe Vermeer is an exception? But that could be because only his best works survived.
]]>It’s true that now that Song of the Horse is available, we can shift our focus on Those Who Make Tomorrow in our search for everything Kurosawa. Having said that, Kurosawa’s involvement with that one was quite small, since he only directed a part of the film from someone else’s script. And I think the full quote that you referred to indicates that Kurosawa really wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the film’s existence (this is from Kyoko Hirano’s Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo, page 218):
In sum, it is a film made by the Struggle Committee and it is a good example of how uninteresting such films could be. It was made in a week, and even now, when I hear their [the demonstators’] songs on May Day, it reminds me of this film and it makes me sleepy. It might be a good film considering it was made in a week.
I assume that a print is in existence since Hirano, writing in the early 90s, seems to have seen it fairly recently. But according to Galbraith it has never been made available on home video, or I think in any form outside of Japan.
Personally, the next “unseen Kurosawa film” on my list is Horse, the last film Kurosawa directed as an assistant director. I think he had more influence on that film than he had on Those Who Make Tomorrow, considering Yamamoto wasn’t present during the shoot, leaving Kurosawa on his own devices. But alas, I have not been able to get hold of a home video print.
]]>There’s one more: Those Who Make Tomorrow, directed by AK plus his mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto, and Hideo Sekigawa in 1946, just after the war. But it’s effectively buried: it’s never been released on home video in any form, and not even Stuart Galbraith and the late Donald Richie had ever seen it. Everything I’ve read suggests that this is probably a bad propaganda film that AK was forced to make for Toho’s left-wing union. But I’d love to see it anyway! Intriguingly, AK himself claimed that it was not *that* bad, for a picture that he had to finish in just a few weeks. It will probably never come to light, but one can always hope.
Jack
]]>The cinematography is fine but nothing special and the “narration” is too sparse to be memorable. The only enjoyable part, for me, was Masaru Sato’s score, which seems to be his last for Kurosawa. Towards the end of the piece, he places this bouncy, jazz-pop bit of score over footage of racing horses, and it reminded me of scenes in Stray Dog or High and Low where something extremely menacing is accompanied by a dance or pop tune. This realization is the only moment during the piece where I thought, “The Master made this.”
Unless you’re like me and the thought of not having EVERY SINGLE KUROSAWA FILM sitting neatly together on the shelf would be a persistent nuisance, I recommend skipping. It looks nice there on the shelf, but I can’t imagine ever watching it again. As for SamuraiDVD, I’ve ordered a few films from them over the years and they’re pretty solid quality and great service. Regrettably, this one was a dud.
]]>Cheers.
]]>