[Stephen Prince]The Warriors' Camera : The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (pdf){Zzzzz}

The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, who died at the age of 88, has been internationally acclaimed as a giant of world cinema. Rashomon, which won both the Venice Film Festival's grand prize and an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, helped ignite Western interest in the Japanese cinema. "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo" remain enormously popular both in Japan and abroad. In this newly revised and expanded edition of his study of Kurosawa's films, Stephen Prince provides two new chapters that examine Kurosawa's remaining films, placing him in the context of cinema history. Prince also discusses how Kurosawa furnished a template for some well-known Hollywood directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Providing a new and comprehensive look at this master filmmaker, "The Warrior's Camera" probes the complex visual structure of Kurosawa's work. The book shows how Kurosawa attempted to symbolize on film a course of national development for post-war Japan, and it traces the ways that he tied his social visions to a dynamic system of visual and narrative forms. The author analyzes Kurosawa's entire career and places the films in context by drawing on the director's autobiography - a fascinating work that presents Kurosawa as a Kurosawa character and the story of his life as the kind of spiritual odyssey witnessed so often in his films. After examining the development of Kurosawa's visual style in his early work, "The Warrior's Camera" explains how he used this style in subsequent films to forge a politically committed model of filmmaking. It then demonstrates how the collapse of Kurosawa's efforts to participate as a filmmaker in the tasks of social reconstruction led to the very different cinematic style evident in his most recent films, works of pessimism that view the world as resistant to change.

Review
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1991 "The Warrior's Camera is not only a thoughtful, stimulating and rigorous study but also a major addition to both Kurosawa and Japanese film scholarship. Its examination of the intersection of self, culture, and history is meticulously done; its extended close analysis of individual films, especially Ikiru, Yojimbo, High and Low, and Red Beard, is superbly confident."--Film Quarterly "The subtle nuances that enrich Akira Kurosawa's intense cinemagraphic imagery distinguish Stephen Prince's insightful study, The Warrior's Camera."--American Cinematographer "[Prince's] close analysis of the films generates many superb insights. This work is accessible, nicely illustrated and an essential text about a great subject."--Choice

About the Author
Stephen Prince is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Virginia Tech. His recent books include Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies.

Publisher: Princeton University Press; Rev Exp Su edition (24 November 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691010463
ISBN-13: 978-0691010465

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Excellent study of a master filmmaker 3 April 2002
By Zack Davisson -
"The Warrior's Camera" is not a casual book for fans of "Yojimbo" and "The Seven Samurai." It is a dense, scholarly tome designed for film majors to study. The book takes for granted that you are familiar with the films of Eisenstein, the books of Dostoyevsky and the plays of Bertold Brecht, as well as the personal philosophies of each of these Kurosawa influences.
This is also not a biography, and none of Kurosawa's personal life is put on display. Films are dissected shot by shot in tight detail.
However, if you are prepared, "The Warrior's Camera" lends tremendous insight into a fascinating director. Each chapter focuses on philosophical themes central to Kurosawa's work, and dives into the films that most represent these personal philosophies. The strength of the individual, and the ability for personal choice, is outlined by "Drunken Angels," "No Regrets for Our Youth" and "Stray Dog." Strength of will is shown in "Ikiru" and "Red Beard." As this is a scholarly work, each chapter presents an argument and then presents evidence to support the argument.
I have come away from this book with a much deeper understanding of Kurosawa and what he was trying to accomplish with his films. Highly recommended, but be prepared to work for your knowledge.

The Filmmaker/Critic's bible. 29 January 2007
By Dylan Cassard -
This is one of my favorite books on film in existance. Stephen Prince gives a beautiful analysis of Kurosawa's entire career. The way he goes into detail about each film and the meta-textual/contextual support he gives to one of cinema's greatest directors is fantastic. His writings on Yojimbo were definately the high point of the book for me (it only further cemented it as my favorite Kurosawa film).

I wish more film scholars produced such cultural and over arching comparatives as Prince presents here.