Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema

This is the first book that attempts to link his work to trends and issues that cut across national boundaries and transcend immediate historical circumstances. Extremely well written, well considered, and provocative, it moves Kurosawa's cinema into the realm of international culture where it belongs. -- David Desser, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Surveying all of Kurosawa's films and examining six films in depth-The Idiot, The Lower Depths, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, and Ran-Goodwin finds in Kurosawa's themes and techniques the capacity to restructure perceptions of Western and Japanese cultures and to establish new meanings in each.In Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema, James Goodwin draws on contemporary theoretical and critical approaches to explore the Japanese director's use of a variety of texts to create films that are uniquely intertextual and intercultural. Surveying all of Kurosawa's films and examining six films in depth- The Idiot, The Lower Depths, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, and Ran-Goodwin finds in Kurosawa's themes and techniques the capacity to restructure perceptions of Western and Japanese cultures and to establish new meanings in each.