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I'm a double major in English Literature and Film Theory/Comparative Literature. I reckon I'll post some shit up in here and see what's what. If you think anything, let me know what it is. Here's one that I cooked up, last week--I hope this doesn't come off like I'm speaking a foreign language....this shit is pretty long, too. Just so you know. No italics, either--ain't no way I'm going back and putting 'em all in for you kids.
"Interpretation v. Presentation; Seven Samurai v. Dodeskaden; Kurosawa v. Kurosawa"
Director Kurosawa Akira’s range of different stylistic traits can, at least in part, be approximated by comparing excerpts from Dodeskaden (1970) and Seven Samurai (1954). Examining two representative sequences with similar motifs (which are staged, shot, and edited in different ways) and comparing the overall style which Kurosawa brings to each picture helps to elucidate this dichotomous relationship. Whereas Seven Samurai has a decidedly interpretive and aggressive style, Dodeskaden demonstrates a subdued, refined, and presentational style.
Two sequences of drunkenness will lay the foundation for this analysis. The first, from Seven Samurai, begins with Kikuchiyo’s (Mifune Toshiro) failed attempt to convince Kambei (Shimura Takashi) and the other six newly assembled samurai of his “respectable” roots. This sequence begins when Kikuchiyo collapses into a frame with seven of our protagonists blocked perfectly in a purposefully composed long-shot (the villager Yohei [Hidari Bokuzen] and all the samurai minus Katsushiro [Kimura Isao] are in the frame); the final shot finds Kikuchiyo collapsed and asleep on a pile of hay via high angle medium close-up. The entire sequence lasts for 2:38 and is comprised of fifteen shots. The average shot length (“ASL”) is just about 10.5 seconds, a figure inflated by the 73-second first shot.
In claiming that Dodeskaden’s style is, amongst other things, a presentational one, I would stress that “presentational” does not mean that the film is somehow more focused upon composition than is Seven Samurai; likewise, I am not claiming that Seven Samurai finds Kurosawa any less occupied with his compositional style than he would later be in Dodeskaden. The divide between each film’s respective stylistic territory has far less to do with what the camera captures than it does with how camera captures and presents its images. The style in Seven Samurai is “interpretive and aggressive” in that the camera is far more active than in Dodeskaden, and the on-screen world is lent suggestiveness by the camera and the style of editing; that is to say, these elements act as kinds of narrative filters. The story is told through images and sounds on the screen, but that story is augmented and built upon by the way we see and hear these things. A closer look at this sequence demonstrates how tactile the camera (rather than the players) renders the action, bringing it closer to the viewer’s perceptions.
The sequence’s first shot is by far the longest; the camera remains static until Kyuzo (Miyaguchi Seiji) quickly passes Kikuchiyo’s sword off to Katsushiro; a beam can be seen at the bottom of the frame. As Kyuzo makes his move, the camera rapidly pans left to follow his action until our first cut. Each shot in this sequence is punctuated with a cut; there are no wipes or dissolves. The second and third shots are 10 and 11 seconds, respectively. The second pans left to follow Kikuchiyo’s pursuit of his weapon, further highlighting the wooden beams separating him from Katsushiro. The third shot opens with a medium close-up of two peasants seen from behind, whom the camera abandons as it simultaneously tracks and pans right in order to follow the action until Kikuchiyo falls through a door. The shot ends with a frontal composition of Kikuchiyo (seen from the back) divided from the samurai in the background (seen at 90 degrees, all seven of the samurai are perfectly framed in this extravagantly pictorial shot) by the door’s remains; Heihachi (Chiaki Minoru) stands in the middle-ground.
Each of the next five shots is either two or three seconds in length and nearly all of them fragment the space, at once showing and obscuring (both through camera movement and cutting) much of the room. The sequence’s fourth shot is a 180-degree cut to Kikuchiyo’s face through the bars of the door in medium close-up. This particular shot resembles a number of Ozu Yasujiro’s 180-degree shot/reverse-shot sequences. Kurosawa, not entirely unlike Ozu, does create a notion of 360-degree space in this sequence, for by the end of things, nearly every corner of the room has been partially glimpsed from a principally central viewpoint. Kurosawa handles this establishment of 360-degree space just about 180 degrees differently than Ozu does, but a tentative establishment remains. The difference is that here the space is constructed with aggressive, exaggerated camera movement and deliberately fragmentary cutting which at once envelops us within the space and fractures our perception of it, while Ozu’s is constructed with hardly any camera movement at all (in Akibiyori, none). The viewer can imagine two circles, one larger (the space in between the two contains most of the action) and housing the smaller circle (within whose area the camera typically remains), to understand how Kurosawa creates a 360-degree space different from Ozu’s own measured construction. This ostensible centering of the camera also helps to clarify the space with ease (even if we can’t possibly see everything), whereas Ozu’s space can be more abstract due to a number of diverse camera set-ups. Kurosawa only leaves this center four times, each in order to capture the same action in shots two through five. Of course, it is also between the third, fourth and fifth shots that the 180-degree cuts occurs. Remember, for now, that while we don’t see quite everything, neither does Kikuchiyo.
The fifth shot cuts back 180 degrees to the same composition as the third shot, while the sixth pans right with Heihachi as he dashes off to avoid Kikuchiyo. The next cut is striking–a kind of jump cut with very similar composition to the previous shot, only with Kikuchiyo as the focus. The shot ends after he collapses, and the eighth shot pans right to follow Heihachi until he looks back, off-screen. The ninth shot lasts 14 seconds and starts as Kikuchiyo hurls an empty bucket to the right. As he rises, the camera pans right, following his stuttering chase through the maze of beams in the room. The tenth shot lasts just one second and is another jump cut match of a right pan, this time cutting from Kikuchiyo to Heihachi.
The eleventh shot lasts for 13 seconds and begins with a right pan to follow Kikuchiyo, who veers wildly into the immediate foreground. After pausing with the exhausted would-be samurai, the camera resumes a tracking pan, this time heading back to the left. The twelfth shot is another frontal composition with Kikuchiyo at the bottom of the frame and Heihachi at the top; it lasts for 7 seconds and features modest right pans to maintain compositional integrity. In the thirteenth shot (17 seconds), Kikuchiyo finally collapses after the camera pans first left, then right to follow his movement along the beams. When he falls, the camera tilts down to follow him. Shot fourteen is a brief two seconds of Heihachi watching Kikuchiyo. The camera slightly tilts up and pans right to follow Heihachi, who at the end of the shot is seen from a slight low angle. Finally, the fifteenth shot is a high angle composition of Kikuchiyo snoring for 8 seconds.
These shots, when taken as a whole and viewed with a scrutinizing eye, demonstrate an aggressive and, as I’ve put it, interpretive style. The aggression (especially relative to Dodeskaden) is obvious–the camera not only moves, but does so with great speed and volatility by starting and stopping in fits. The camera’s movement is not simply motivated by characters moving in the frame, though of course the camera must move in order to capture the action and clearly convey the story. Instead, the style interprets and personifies the action and Kikuchiyo.
This shot-by-shot breakdown reveals that the sequence’s stylistic template (the frequency of cuts, the movement of the camera, the framing of the characters, etc.) not only shows us what’s happening, but shows us (and encourages us to feel) how it is happening. Mifune dominates nearly every frame in this sequence, and it is he whom the camera vicariously lives through. His staggeringly drunk Kikuchiyo spends a great deal of time careening through frames in vain pursuit of his sword: he regularly bolts off at a feverish pace only to collapse or simply give up for a time, he repeatedly finds himself boxed in by the design of the room, unable navigate its myriad beams and posts, and his rage ebbs and flows every few seconds. Likewise, the camera often tears off to follow the action, only to slow down or come to a stop; at other times, a frenzied camera move will precede a shot of stillness. Like Kikuchiyo, the shots are repeatedly tightened up with the room’s wooden support beams. They functionally block the action and delineate levels of depth in shots while also encroaching on the viewpoint the audience shares with the camera, lending many of the shots a claustrophobic air intensified by quick cutting. For that matter, the length of each shot can vary widely, as the longest take lasts over a minute while the shortest is one second. Were the initial shot in the sequence not considered, the ASL would shrink from 10.5 to just over 6 seconds. Kurosawa has worked to leave the audience not only in hysterics at Kikuchiyo’s wild antics (aided by the boozy swing of the non-diegetic score), but also breathless in the wake of the director’s stylistic mannerisms.
The fairly brief length of each shot is not the only aggressive stylistic component at work, for the camera often pans briefly, pauses, and resumes. Twice, the camera indecisively pans in one direction only then to pan in the other direction within a single shot. Movements to the right dominate the sequence, but the presence of a number of notable pans to the left (including the first) and frequent slight, but still kinetic and jittery, pans and tilts maintain this sense of comprehensible chaos. Kikuchiyo, then, is not the only drunkard in this scene; the camera is just as inebriated as he is. Kurosawa has interpreted and personified this character with a decidedly aggressive style. This same interpretational approach informs the style of nearly every sequence in Seven Samurai, whether it be a blistering action sequence, a moment of contemplation, or a comical mish-mash like this one.
Kurosawa would assemble another scene of drunkenness in Dodeskaden with many of the same formal elements (there are long takes, short takes, varying shot lengths, pans, tilts, etc.), but the manner of composition could not differ more notably; the interpretational aesthetic is incredibly less-prominent in Dodeskaden, and is replaced by a subdued, presentational style which usually shows us what an observer would see rather than what or how the characters would see (exceptions do exist, of course). The sequence sees Masuda (Igawa Hisashi) coming home, drunk, to his wife (Okiyama Hideko); his friend Kawaguchi (Tanaka Kunie) soon arrives to help. The six-shot sequence lasts for 3:24 and the ASL is 34 seconds, quite a leap from Seven Samurai. The shots last 58, 3, 20, 33, 28, and 72 seconds, respectively.
The first shot shows Masuda from behind as he approaches his front door; it is a medium-long forward dolly (or dolly-like) shot. The door opens to reveal his wife, and yellow dominates the frame. The first cut is 180 degrees, as the camera looks out the door at Masuda; the third shot is stylistically typical for this film, as it cuts 90 degrees to the left (relative to the second shot) to present the two characters in a tight frame at the threshold. The camera tilts up to follow them and a cut of almost 90 degrees follows, giving us a slightly different angle than in the second shot; the camera pans with Masuda’s wife first to the left, then to the right as she moves to get water and comes to a rest just in time for Kawaguchi’s entrance. Another cut then gives us the same angle as in the third shot, and Kurosawa tracks right, dollies back, and tilts to keep the three characters well-framed. The final cut is composed roughly the same way as is the fourth shot as Kurosawa again pans and tilts to keep his characters in the frame as Masuda rests, Kawaguchi leaves, and Masuda’s wife splashes her husband with the water he’s been begging for.
This sequence is far more reservedly presentational than Seven Samurai, and it is quite standard for Dodeskaden. Although the camera does make use of a 180-degree cut, it never crosses to the other side of this 180-degree line, and there is no composition of 360-degree space in this sequence, fractured or otherwise (there are sequences which make use of complicated camera moves to create at least a semblance of 360-degree space in the film, but they are far removed from the sequence in Seven Samurai or anything in Ozu’s Akibiyori). Kurosawa still has an eye for stylistic presentation and composition (the camera’s continual, even if slight, movement maintains the framing of these characters, and the bombastic use of stylized color are obvious examples–there are many more), but his presentation is highly refined and, yes, presentational; Kurosawa is now more interested in showing us what is happening than in stylistically interpreting it. Many compositions (particularly those featuring the father-and-son dreamers) are flat (even if not frontal), static, and narrative-centered rather than narrative (or interpretive) in the way Seven Samurai is; even the mobile sequence with the red-shirted woman around the pump shows her telling a story as the camera captures more of her presence than of her spirit. This sequence is no exception–these men may be drunk, but there is no drunken stylization at play. Kurosawa’s overall style (despite the brash colors) is sedate and refined, letting the characters, their actions, and their words tell the audience what is happening.
The stylistic shift between Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Dodeskaden is bold as can be, and by comparing these sequences, the divide between his earlier, interpretive style and his later, more presentational style could not be more obvious. Kurosawa has clearly marked his territory in each case, and the rigorous adherence to his self-imposed stylistic principles demonstrates a film-maker determinedly standing his ground at all costs.
"Interpretation v. Presentation; Seven Samurai v. Dodeskaden; Kurosawa v. Kurosawa"
Director Kurosawa Akira’s range of different stylistic traits can, at least in part, be approximated by comparing excerpts from Dodeskaden (1970) and Seven Samurai (1954). Examining two representative sequences with similar motifs (which are staged, shot, and edited in different ways) and comparing the overall style which Kurosawa brings to each picture helps to elucidate this dichotomous relationship. Whereas Seven Samurai has a decidedly interpretive and aggressive style, Dodeskaden demonstrates a subdued, refined, and presentational style.
Two sequences of drunkenness will lay the foundation for this analysis. The first, from Seven Samurai, begins with Kikuchiyo’s (Mifune Toshiro) failed attempt to convince Kambei (Shimura Takashi) and the other six newly assembled samurai of his “respectable” roots. This sequence begins when Kikuchiyo collapses into a frame with seven of our protagonists blocked perfectly in a purposefully composed long-shot (the villager Yohei [Hidari Bokuzen] and all the samurai minus Katsushiro [Kimura Isao] are in the frame); the final shot finds Kikuchiyo collapsed and asleep on a pile of hay via high angle medium close-up. The entire sequence lasts for 2:38 and is comprised of fifteen shots. The average shot length (“ASL”) is just about 10.5 seconds, a figure inflated by the 73-second first shot.
In claiming that Dodeskaden’s style is, amongst other things, a presentational one, I would stress that “presentational” does not mean that the film is somehow more focused upon composition than is Seven Samurai; likewise, I am not claiming that Seven Samurai finds Kurosawa any less occupied with his compositional style than he would later be in Dodeskaden. The divide between each film’s respective stylistic territory has far less to do with what the camera captures than it does with how camera captures and presents its images. The style in Seven Samurai is “interpretive and aggressive” in that the camera is far more active than in Dodeskaden, and the on-screen world is lent suggestiveness by the camera and the style of editing; that is to say, these elements act as kinds of narrative filters. The story is told through images and sounds on the screen, but that story is augmented and built upon by the way we see and hear these things. A closer look at this sequence demonstrates how tactile the camera (rather than the players) renders the action, bringing it closer to the viewer’s perceptions.
The sequence’s first shot is by far the longest; the camera remains static until Kyuzo (Miyaguchi Seiji) quickly passes Kikuchiyo’s sword off to Katsushiro; a beam can be seen at the bottom of the frame. As Kyuzo makes his move, the camera rapidly pans left to follow his action until our first cut. Each shot in this sequence is punctuated with a cut; there are no wipes or dissolves. The second and third shots are 10 and 11 seconds, respectively. The second pans left to follow Kikuchiyo’s pursuit of his weapon, further highlighting the wooden beams separating him from Katsushiro. The third shot opens with a medium close-up of two peasants seen from behind, whom the camera abandons as it simultaneously tracks and pans right in order to follow the action until Kikuchiyo falls through a door. The shot ends with a frontal composition of Kikuchiyo (seen from the back) divided from the samurai in the background (seen at 90 degrees, all seven of the samurai are perfectly framed in this extravagantly pictorial shot) by the door’s remains; Heihachi (Chiaki Minoru) stands in the middle-ground.
Each of the next five shots is either two or three seconds in length and nearly all of them fragment the space, at once showing and obscuring (both through camera movement and cutting) much of the room. The sequence’s fourth shot is a 180-degree cut to Kikuchiyo’s face through the bars of the door in medium close-up. This particular shot resembles a number of Ozu Yasujiro’s 180-degree shot/reverse-shot sequences. Kurosawa, not entirely unlike Ozu, does create a notion of 360-degree space in this sequence, for by the end of things, nearly every corner of the room has been partially glimpsed from a principally central viewpoint. Kurosawa handles this establishment of 360-degree space just about 180 degrees differently than Ozu does, but a tentative establishment remains. The difference is that here the space is constructed with aggressive, exaggerated camera movement and deliberately fragmentary cutting which at once envelops us within the space and fractures our perception of it, while Ozu’s is constructed with hardly any camera movement at all (in Akibiyori, none). The viewer can imagine two circles, one larger (the space in between the two contains most of the action) and housing the smaller circle (within whose area the camera typically remains), to understand how Kurosawa creates a 360-degree space different from Ozu’s own measured construction. This ostensible centering of the camera also helps to clarify the space with ease (even if we can’t possibly see everything), whereas Ozu’s space can be more abstract due to a number of diverse camera set-ups. Kurosawa only leaves this center four times, each in order to capture the same action in shots two through five. Of course, it is also between the third, fourth and fifth shots that the 180-degree cuts occurs. Remember, for now, that while we don’t see quite everything, neither does Kikuchiyo.
The fifth shot cuts back 180 degrees to the same composition as the third shot, while the sixth pans right with Heihachi as he dashes off to avoid Kikuchiyo. The next cut is striking–a kind of jump cut with very similar composition to the previous shot, only with Kikuchiyo as the focus. The shot ends after he collapses, and the eighth shot pans right to follow Heihachi until he looks back, off-screen. The ninth shot lasts 14 seconds and starts as Kikuchiyo hurls an empty bucket to the right. As he rises, the camera pans right, following his stuttering chase through the maze of beams in the room. The tenth shot lasts just one second and is another jump cut match of a right pan, this time cutting from Kikuchiyo to Heihachi.
The eleventh shot lasts for 13 seconds and begins with a right pan to follow Kikuchiyo, who veers wildly into the immediate foreground. After pausing with the exhausted would-be samurai, the camera resumes a tracking pan, this time heading back to the left. The twelfth shot is another frontal composition with Kikuchiyo at the bottom of the frame and Heihachi at the top; it lasts for 7 seconds and features modest right pans to maintain compositional integrity. In the thirteenth shot (17 seconds), Kikuchiyo finally collapses after the camera pans first left, then right to follow his movement along the beams. When he falls, the camera tilts down to follow him. Shot fourteen is a brief two seconds of Heihachi watching Kikuchiyo. The camera slightly tilts up and pans right to follow Heihachi, who at the end of the shot is seen from a slight low angle. Finally, the fifteenth shot is a high angle composition of Kikuchiyo snoring for 8 seconds.
These shots, when taken as a whole and viewed with a scrutinizing eye, demonstrate an aggressive and, as I’ve put it, interpretive style. The aggression (especially relative to Dodeskaden) is obvious–the camera not only moves, but does so with great speed and volatility by starting and stopping in fits. The camera’s movement is not simply motivated by characters moving in the frame, though of course the camera must move in order to capture the action and clearly convey the story. Instead, the style interprets and personifies the action and Kikuchiyo.
This shot-by-shot breakdown reveals that the sequence’s stylistic template (the frequency of cuts, the movement of the camera, the framing of the characters, etc.) not only shows us what’s happening, but shows us (and encourages us to feel) how it is happening. Mifune dominates nearly every frame in this sequence, and it is he whom the camera vicariously lives through. His staggeringly drunk Kikuchiyo spends a great deal of time careening through frames in vain pursuit of his sword: he regularly bolts off at a feverish pace only to collapse or simply give up for a time, he repeatedly finds himself boxed in by the design of the room, unable navigate its myriad beams and posts, and his rage ebbs and flows every few seconds. Likewise, the camera often tears off to follow the action, only to slow down or come to a stop; at other times, a frenzied camera move will precede a shot of stillness. Like Kikuchiyo, the shots are repeatedly tightened up with the room’s wooden support beams. They functionally block the action and delineate levels of depth in shots while also encroaching on the viewpoint the audience shares with the camera, lending many of the shots a claustrophobic air intensified by quick cutting. For that matter, the length of each shot can vary widely, as the longest take lasts over a minute while the shortest is one second. Were the initial shot in the sequence not considered, the ASL would shrink from 10.5 to just over 6 seconds. Kurosawa has worked to leave the audience not only in hysterics at Kikuchiyo’s wild antics (aided by the boozy swing of the non-diegetic score), but also breathless in the wake of the director’s stylistic mannerisms.
The fairly brief length of each shot is not the only aggressive stylistic component at work, for the camera often pans briefly, pauses, and resumes. Twice, the camera indecisively pans in one direction only then to pan in the other direction within a single shot. Movements to the right dominate the sequence, but the presence of a number of notable pans to the left (including the first) and frequent slight, but still kinetic and jittery, pans and tilts maintain this sense of comprehensible chaos. Kikuchiyo, then, is not the only drunkard in this scene; the camera is just as inebriated as he is. Kurosawa has interpreted and personified this character with a decidedly aggressive style. This same interpretational approach informs the style of nearly every sequence in Seven Samurai, whether it be a blistering action sequence, a moment of contemplation, or a comical mish-mash like this one.
Kurosawa would assemble another scene of drunkenness in Dodeskaden with many of the same formal elements (there are long takes, short takes, varying shot lengths, pans, tilts, etc.), but the manner of composition could not differ more notably; the interpretational aesthetic is incredibly less-prominent in Dodeskaden, and is replaced by a subdued, presentational style which usually shows us what an observer would see rather than what or how the characters would see (exceptions do exist, of course). The sequence sees Masuda (Igawa Hisashi) coming home, drunk, to his wife (Okiyama Hideko); his friend Kawaguchi (Tanaka Kunie) soon arrives to help. The six-shot sequence lasts for 3:24 and the ASL is 34 seconds, quite a leap from Seven Samurai. The shots last 58, 3, 20, 33, 28, and 72 seconds, respectively.
The first shot shows Masuda from behind as he approaches his front door; it is a medium-long forward dolly (or dolly-like) shot. The door opens to reveal his wife, and yellow dominates the frame. The first cut is 180 degrees, as the camera looks out the door at Masuda; the third shot is stylistically typical for this film, as it cuts 90 degrees to the left (relative to the second shot) to present the two characters in a tight frame at the threshold. The camera tilts up to follow them and a cut of almost 90 degrees follows, giving us a slightly different angle than in the second shot; the camera pans with Masuda’s wife first to the left, then to the right as she moves to get water and comes to a rest just in time for Kawaguchi’s entrance. Another cut then gives us the same angle as in the third shot, and Kurosawa tracks right, dollies back, and tilts to keep the three characters well-framed. The final cut is composed roughly the same way as is the fourth shot as Kurosawa again pans and tilts to keep his characters in the frame as Masuda rests, Kawaguchi leaves, and Masuda’s wife splashes her husband with the water he’s been begging for.
This sequence is far more reservedly presentational than Seven Samurai, and it is quite standard for Dodeskaden. Although the camera does make use of a 180-degree cut, it never crosses to the other side of this 180-degree line, and there is no composition of 360-degree space in this sequence, fractured or otherwise (there are sequences which make use of complicated camera moves to create at least a semblance of 360-degree space in the film, but they are far removed from the sequence in Seven Samurai or anything in Ozu’s Akibiyori). Kurosawa still has an eye for stylistic presentation and composition (the camera’s continual, even if slight, movement maintains the framing of these characters, and the bombastic use of stylized color are obvious examples–there are many more), but his presentation is highly refined and, yes, presentational; Kurosawa is now more interested in showing us what is happening than in stylistically interpreting it. Many compositions (particularly those featuring the father-and-son dreamers) are flat (even if not frontal), static, and narrative-centered rather than narrative (or interpretive) in the way Seven Samurai is; even the mobile sequence with the red-shirted woman around the pump shows her telling a story as the camera captures more of her presence than of her spirit. This sequence is no exception–these men may be drunk, but there is no drunken stylization at play. Kurosawa’s overall style (despite the brash colors) is sedate and refined, letting the characters, their actions, and their words tell the audience what is happening.
The stylistic shift between Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Dodeskaden is bold as can be, and by comparing these sequences, the divide between his earlier, interpretive style and his later, more presentational style could not be more obvious. Kurosawa has clearly marked his territory in each case, and the rigorous adherence to his self-imposed stylistic principles demonstrates a film-maker determinedly standing his ground at all costs.
