The Dan Schneider Interview 40: David Desser (first posted 6/16/13)
DD: Thank
you for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself via your web site and
thank you for your interest in me and my work.
I am from Brooklyn originally and it is while a high school student in
New York City that I saw my first Japanese films (aside from the dubbed
“monster movies” of my earlier youth, which were common on TV).
These films – Seven
Samurai, Yojimbo – shown on PBS as part of a series on world
cinema, struck a chord with me immediately. Fortunately, there was a theater in
Manhattan, the Bijou as I recall, that was showing Japanese films. It was great
to be able to seem them in a theater instead of TV (remember that the biggest
TVs in those days were only 25 inches). Later,
I saw dubbed Hong Kong movies and, when I moved to LA in 1975 I got to see Hong
Kong movies in Chinese. I have
written a good deal on Hong Kong cinema, actually (as per your next question
which indicates that I focus on Japanese and Korean cinema, but I do HK as
well). I have had the great good
fortune to be able to have traveled to many parts of the world and have managed
more extended stays in Japan (in Tokyo and Osaka) and in Hong Kong – my
longest stay overseas by far, more than one year. After I finished graduate school in Cinema at USC I entered
the margins of the film business, but determined or realized that the academic
life was for me. And so I was lucky
to get a position at the University of Illinois and from there to travel the
country and the world. I am in the
perhaps dubious situation of having achieved my goals – and more!—and since
my retirement have kept my hand in the academic life by editing my journal and
teaching in one or more of the various film programs in LA.
DS: You have edited and written for
numerous cinema and film studies publications. Please name some of those you
were most involved with, and what the aims of such publications are. Are you
involved with any at this time? What are your future plans re: propagating the
exegesis of foreign cinema? What has been the driving raison d’etre for your
focus on Japanese and Korean cinema vs. other ethnic and national cinemas?
DD: I was the editor of Cinema Journal, one of the premier academic journals in the field, from 1993-1998; before that I was the Book Review editor of Film Quarterly, another major publication. Currently, I co-edit the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. Journal editing has changed a great deal since I was involved with CJ. It’s a breeze from the technical angle—everything done electronically. The tough part if finding good essays to publish and the fun part is working with the authors to get their pieces into the best possible shape. These journals are all geared toward Film Studies specialists. There would be no great point to try and sell them on newsstands. But it has been very satisfying to help shepherd younger scholars into print and to publish the work of major figures in the field.
As for Japanese and Korean cinema vs. other
national/regional or ethnic cinemas. In
fact, as I mentioned, I have done a good deal of work on Hong Kong cinema and I
have a strong interest in Indian cinema, especially Hindi.
Bollywood is, however, difficult to keep up with and I just don’t have
the time to see as many of those films as I’d like.
I have, by the way, published quite a bit of work on American cinema,
too, so please don’t think I ignore my own culture and country!
I would, however, love to write a decent history of Hong Kong cinema –
there is no such thing in English. However,
I am unlikely to be able to achieve this goal.
It won’t be a great regret, but it will be too bad that I am unlikely
to achieve this particular goal.
DS: Film criticism seems to break down
into two camps: popular or demotic: with the late Roger Ebert being the best
known example, but this also includes online critics, and the sort who give mere
yea or nay opinions, if they like or dislike a film, and make the most obvious
points that every other critic makes, and then there is the obtuseness of film
school sort of criticism- the best popular example would be the
Senses Of Cinema website sort, wherein critic will rhapsodize on a
slight camera movement in a minor scene, or an obscure symbol, that has nothing
cogent to do with the film’s overall theme or purpose, while missing more
important aspects like the acting or screenplay. These sorts of film writings
are as worthless as most of the yea or nay sorts because they show the film
critic or historian is more concerned with preening, bigwordthrowingarounding,
and a sense of superiority than they are with explaining why a film does or does
not work. Which school, if either, do you find more gallig, and do you think
that a lack of any real good film criticism has anything to do with why the
modern American filmgoer is so rapt by the puerile idiocy Hollywood foists at
it?
DD: Well, I have to say that while there is a good deal of validity to your critique of “film school” criticism, as the product of film school myself and a professor who taught film in a university setting, I am reluctant to agree with any wholesale dismissal of it. In fact, I often assign essays from Senses of Cinema to my students. I’d say if you think that writing is bad you should see some of the stuff published in books! I don’t pay much attention to film reviews—I read the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Time and Entertainment Weekly and certainly read the reviews in there, but rarely would anything a reviewer says influence my decision on whether or not to see a film. Academic criticism tends not to be involved with aesthetic judgments, so I wouldn’t say that tends to influence my film-going decisions; though occasionally a good article about an older film might inspire me to seek it out. That’s what the best criticism does, after all. And I try to write in such a way that non-specialists could enter into my discussion without feeling that I am more concerned with preening, showing off and demonstrating my superiority. (I save that for the classroom - J)
It would be nice if Hollywood “trained” its
audience to think about film instead of simply being swept up by it.
But I have given up imagining that American audiences will abandon
Hollywood for foreign cinemas or even go a bit more often to see a subtitled
film.
DS: As you are an emeritus professor,
what does your typical workweek consist of? Do you spend more time in theaters
or at a tv screen than you do in the classroom?
DD: Actually,
I do teach on an adjunct basis as much as I can to some extent.
So I still do course preparation, grading and going to classes.
I also write a great deal still (mostly contributions to edited
collections) and also have a child. Childcare
is time-consuming, but very worthwhile. I
see only two or so films per month in the theater and a few films a month on the
tv screen. I wish I could see more
movies, that’s for sure.
DS: Do you have a hierarchy for national
cinemas- i.e.- if you were to rank the top 20 cinemas, is Japan #1, France #6,
America #10, Italy #12, India #17, etc? And, is there a separation between
studio films and independent films in other countries, the way there is in
America? Are most national cinemas like the current U.S. model, more like the
Golden Age Hollywood studio system. Or are there more ethnic John Cassavetes/Orson
Welles types out there? If so or not, to what degree do certain national
cinema’s structural ‘architecture,’ if you will, affect the films that
come from them?
DD: I do rank national cinemas – though national cinemas is a problematic concept to conceptualize these days. What is frequently called “globalization” or transnational filmmaking, though already a cliché, has clearly affected any simple notion of the national. Actors who appear across boundaries has long been common in film (think of so many multi-national casts, for instance, or wonderful, beloved films with actors from different countries, such as the charming Cinema Paradiso or the powerful The Conformist or even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
National cinemas also rise and fall. France in the 30s was far better and more important than it was in the 1950s. America/Hollywood (we often neglect to imagine “Hollywood” as the American national cinema or think that America has no national cinema) was unimportant in the 1960s, but France had risen. But of all time, I would say: the US, France, Japan, India, Hong Kong in that order. Then places like the UK, Italy, South Korea, Germany and Mexico would round out the top ten.
I am of the opinion that, overall, studio
filmmaking produces better films than independents.
Japanese cinema of the 1930s and 1950s relied on a model comparable to
the Golden Age Hollywood model and those two decades are the best in Japanese
film history. Similarly, Hong Kong
cinema of the late 1950s through the 1970s also had something similar.
The case of Hong Kong is interesting these days --- there are no studios
as we understand the idea, but there are companies that produce films and these
tend to be better than the strictly independent films that are made. The same thing in South Korea – major production companies
partner with the companies run by the directors. Of course there are exceptions, but in bulk the studio films
of yesteryear or the production companies of today tend to make better films
than pure independents.
DS: In this video interview you state that Japanese cinema no longer seems to be Japanese any longer. Famously, Ozu was always tagged as the most Japanese of Japanese filmmakers. Someone like Kurosawa was more universal, in a sense. Is this what you mean- a universal Japanness that seeks excellence, like Kurosawa did, or a sort of generic, bland Hollywoodized, or Bollywoodized embrace of Lowest Common Denominator schlock? Pleas expound.
DD: I don’t actually mean either of the
alternatives you present. What I
mean is that the Japanese, in the main, tend to work in what I call “global
genres” that transcend the national and appeal to global audiences.
But this is not necessarily “bland” LCD filmmaking.
Japanese horror or action or neo-noir is often very good.
It’s just that there are very few working in the real Ozu-like mode.
It is the difference, say, between the wonderful Horror-Thrillers of
Kurosawa Kiyoshi compared to the more specifically Japanese, Ozu-like films of
Kore-eda Hirokazu. Of course,
Japan’s most popular director both at home and abroad is Miyazaki Hayao and he
is very specifically Japanese.
DS: I am of the opinion that ‘pure
cinema’ is a chimera, and that film is more of an extension of literature with
pictures- i.e.- ‘cinemature’- than it is moving photographs with words
appended. That is, I agree with the old maxim, I believe from director John
Huston, ‘all good films
start with a good script.’ What are your thoughts on this?
DD: Most good films
start with a good script; but some great films use the script only as a basis to
begin with and transcend it. We
could go back to the Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s and re-argue the question of
the auteur director vs the “scripteur” – the director who competently
films someone else’s words. As
for the former idea – I met with the great director Don Siegel years ago and
we talked about his later films and why they just weren’t as good as his
classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Killers, Dirty Harry.
And he said they were rushed into production before the script was ready
and without a good script things were simply “hopeless” as he said. But the
greatest movies cannot show their greatness from the script.
Meet Me in St. Louis, The Searchers, Taxi Driver –
have someone else film them and maybe they are not so great; just good. And I
would say the weakness of Hong Kong cinema, maybe throughout its history, but
certainly since the 1980s, lies in the weak scripts; but many very good films
are made in that circumstance. So
maybe there is no “pure cinema” but there are filmmakers who make better
films than others. Here’s the
test: why are remakes of classics almost always worse than the
originals? Same story, often same
settings. So why is the original
better? Better director.
DS: Let me now
turn more basic. How do you define your job, as a film critic, film historian,
film sociologist? What import on culture do you think film has specifically?
What import on culture do you think art has generally?
DD: I define my job as pointing out aspects of films that people may not have noticed or known. This may involve the socio-cultural-historical context out of which a film grows. How best to appreciate, say, Japanese radical films of the 1960s? I would say by understanding the time and circumstances in which they were made. Or in discussing Japanese cinema more generally, I point out the style – the specifically cinematic elements – as a way of both increasing enjoyment as well as linking films to aspects of traditional or modern Japanese art. And I conceive of my job as bringing to attention films that might not be so well known, adding to the canon.
The question of film’s import and impact on
culture is, literally, incalculable. Film
has transformed not just traditional art, like painting, or modern art like
literature and photography, but our very consciousness
DS: Did you have any heroes in filmmaking
or criticism, or any other arts or professions, as you grew up? If so, who and
why?
DD: I am not particularly a “star
worshipper.” I don’t really
have heroes. I was, however, an
admirer of Andrew Sarris and a less well-known English critic-writer named John
Russell Taylor. These two taught me
about the importance of the film director and Taylor introduced me to a host of
foreign directors through his writings (a book called Cinema Eye Cinema Ear
was perhaps the first great book of film criticism devoted to foreign directors
– I read it around 1971 or so and it really opened my cinema eyes and ears, so
to speak. In graduate school at USC
I had a chance to take classes from him.
DS: When and where were you born? What
were some of the major, or defining, issues during your youth, insofar as they
affected your career path? Were you politically, socially, or artistically
active when young? What films or television shows had an effect on you?
DD: As I said above, I was born in Brooklyn and went to high school in Manhattan, near Greenwich Village in the heady days of the 1960s. I cannot imagine that I would be anything like the person I am were it not for the 60s—both the counterculture and the politics, both of which affected me greatly. I was both socially and politically active right through the early 70s. I tried political activism (though I was very young) through organized groups as well as intellectual-social activism through others. I was in those days very introspective, moody and neurotic (today I am merely the latter two). I thought I might be a poet and did indeed write and publish some poetry (in terrible anthologies). And I thought I might be a filmmaker/director. In fact, though I got a PhD in film studies from USC, I began in their very famous and prestigious MFA program – but I determined I didn’t have either the drive or the talent to make it as a director in Hollywood.
I was always an avid reader – in high school I
discovered the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Hermann Hesse, Robert Heinlein, JRR
Tolkien. And when I was as a high
school senior I learned of Jack Kerouac. These
works impacted me profoundly. I
also discovered foreign films. When
I was a kid everyone went to the movies regularly, if not often.
But we never saw foreign films. But
in my high school in Manhattan I made more worldly friends who introduced me to
the wonderful world of foreign films. Perhaps
my favorite of that period, which spoke to me tremendously, was the British film
If…. I also discovered the
films of Luis Bunuel, Ken Russell, and Fellini.
Quite a trip for a teenager! And
I’ll tell you a favorite TV show - Then Came Bronson.
Only the Made-for-TV pilot movie is available on DVD; wish the whole
series was.
DS: Where do you reside? How long have
you lived there, and what advantages and disadvantages does the location present
for your company and work?
DD: I
live in Los Angeles now; have for the past two years.
It’s the perfect place to see and study film. I’m so glad the twists and turns of my life have brought me
back to LA.
DS:
What did you want to be when you grew up? Where did you go to high school, and
to what college?
DD: Well, for years I imagined I’d be a
doctor, especially attending my Manhattan-based high school which specialized in
math and science. Even when I began
NYU I was pre-med. But my
introspection and writing talents took me toward majoring in English and
fancying myself, as I said above, a poet. I was still reading Tolkien and
Kerouac and other fantasy and Beat writers.
Perhaps I thought I might become a Beatnik hobbit?
DS: What were some of the cultural
touchstones in your life, the things, events, or people who graced your
existence with those ‘I remember exactly where I
was’ moments?
DD: I remember where I was, like many
people, when I learned of JFK’s assassination, and RFK’s and that of Martin
Luther King, Jr. Terrible events in difficult times.
And I clearly recall the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and also LBJ’s
announcement that he would not seek reelection to the presidency. I also
remember where I was when I learned of the shootings at Kent State.
DS: Are you married? What does your wife
do? And how did you meet? Is she a critic, writer, etc.?
DD: Yes, I am married.
My wife is also a film professor who works on Korean cinema and African
American cinema. We met through a
mutual acquaintance, also a film professor.
DS:
What sort of child were you- a
loner or center of attention? Did you get good grades? Were you a mama’s boy
or a rebel?
DD: As I hinted at above, I was both outgoing but also introspective. I was a good athlete, but never one who could imagine playing professions sports. As Woody Allen says in Annie Hall, I was “all schoolyard.” I got excellent grades, but by high school I was a rebel – long haired, radical, hippie freak.
DS: Any
siblings? What paths in life have they followed?
DD: I grew up in a solid nuclear family with
many relatives nearby. I had a
younger sister with whom I frequently played many games.
She became a health care professional, but, sadly, died of cancer at age
52. There were hundreds of people
at her funeral. I was so proud to
know how loved and respected she was.
DS:
Any children? What paths have they followed in life? What are their interests?
DD: I have two children – one happily
married, who is an event planner, the other is six years old.
DS:
What of your parents? What were their professions? Did they encourage your
pursuits?
DD: My parents were basically
lower-middle-class. No profession; they had jobs.
They went to work, worked hard for years and took care of their children.
They were extremely supportive of me.
What I did – getting a PhD – was so far from their own experience.
Neither of them even went to college, let along graduate school. They were terrific parents and people.
DS: I’ve often argued vociferously
against the notion that ‘art is truth,’
but journalism, science, and history are or should be about the
search for truth. Do you agree? If so, what truths have you encountered in
researching films that debunked some well held fallacies you had? What was it
like to have to let go of your presuppositions?
DD: I do not agree with this separation of
yours. “Art” is, or should be,
about the search for truth. Truth
is not simple, singular or reducible. Art
is an expression of some fact of the world, whether the outside world or the
inner. I don’t think, however, that I’ve ever had to let go of well-held
fallacies or presuppositions in reading anything.
I’ve learned so much from reading journalism, history and science, as
well as seeing and reading about film. My
mind is always open and I hope will remain so.
DS: Art speaking
a truth is fundamentally different from its being a truth.
Looking at the root of the word art, after all, shows it derives from the same
place as artifice. Therefore, art can NEVER be truth, only an instrument that
CAN get at a truth. But, it can also illumine aspects of existence utterly
disconnected to truth, like emotions, bad ideas, politics, etc. Do you also find
the ‘art is truth’ equation laughable and silly.
DD: I’m
afraid I don’t agree at all. Emotions
are truth, bad ideas may be wrong, but they are a “truth” even if they are
not true. But I don’t place films
in any kind of hierarchy of “truth” just as I wouldn’t put paintings or
novels in that way. They are
experiential and that is as much truth as anything.
DS:
What of your views on politics? How, if in any way, do they affect your
criticism?
DD: My
politics does affect my criticism, though I am not generally thought of in the
field of academic film studies as a particularly “ideological” critic.
I would prefer that the films I like be politically progressive, but, on
the other hand, I don’t generally care about the actual politics of the
filmmaker.
DS: Why do you think so many artists
believe that politics take precedence over artistic quality?
DD: I don’t think so many artists believe that at all. If they do, then they are not artists, but only propagandists.
DS: Before we get on to more specific
areas, have you any ideas on what is the cause of the lack of introspection in
modern American society- from Hollywood films, television shows, book
publishers, etc.? Is American or Western culture simply as shallow as man of its
detractors claim? In the arts, Political Correctness and Postmodernism have
certainly aided in the ‘dumbing down’ of culture. What are your thoughts on
those two ills- PC and PoMo?
DD: I don’t agree that PC and PoMo have aided the “dumbing down” of culture. PC can certainly be taken to absurd or silly extremes, but the opposite is far worse. Racism, sexism and homophobia are far greater ills than attempts to get people to change our language or images to a kind of bland gender or racial neutrality. Just think of what things were like in our society before a greater political consciousness came about.
As for PoMo – yes, this, too, can be taken to extremes, though it did not start as any kind of conscious “movement.” It began simply as a descriptive category to explain some then-current tendencies. It was initially allied to Marxist criticism and so there was a real “bite” to it, a real critique of the dumbing down of culture in the name of the commodity. And so if there is indeed a dumbing down it’s not due to PC or PoMo, but to good, old-fashioned commodification and consumerism. These tendencies have always been a part of the movie business, of course, but somehow art overcame commerce as it much less frequently does today.
DS: Do you believe any critic or filmgoer
owes it to the artist to take into account anything that does not belong on the
screen, page, or between a frame? If so, does that not necessarily bastardize
the standalone work of art?
DD: You are getting at the old New Criticism
movement that claimed that a work of art must stand alone, that authorial
intention had no place in criticism or that even historical context was
irrelevant to the aesthetic/formal features of the work and the genre(s) into
which it could be placed. I rarely
read biographies of directors and even if I do it is not as a search for clues
to the meaning of the work. Do I
care if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays or do I care that those plays
assigned to “Shakespeare” are among the greatest works ever produced by
mankind?
DS: Let me ask you of something I see as
deleterious to both the appreciation of film, and the purveying of good
criticism, and that’s what I call ‘critical cribbing.’ It happens
especially online, but started long before that, in print. This is when claims-
pro or con- about a film, or serious errors, are propounded again and again. If
a Kenneth Turan or Roger Ebert said A, B, or C about Film X, then the same
ideas, with the slightest variations, are propounded on hundreds of blogs and
newspapers. I think about the misinformation in films, such as when I watched
Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup;
and the same nonsense about the characters having names cropped up, but there
were none in the film. A similar thing re: the characters being called by
letters occurred in Last
Year In Marienbad; but that, too, was false. This tells me the review
is a phone-in, and I’ve seen similar things occur in reviews of books and
poets. I posit that most critics, in whatever field, truly do not engage the art
they review. They watch or read part of it, justify presuppositions and biases,
and, once an artist or film gets a reputation, they never waver from it. If you
troll about online, you will find very little variance in the ‘meme’ that
gets attached to any film or director. The point of view- negative or positive,
may be differing, but the take, often flawed, is always the same for each
critic. Do you agree that this lack of attention to their own craft is formed by
biases?
DD: I’m not sure it’s biases that are
involved, but, rather, laziness. Let
me give you an example of exactly what you are talking about.
It’s common to say about the films of Ozu that he uses an angle in
filming Japanese interiors that reproduces the eye-level of someone sitting on
tatami mats. But this is patently
and clearly not true. The
camera position is obviously lower than that, not eye level at all. Yet one reads this time and again.
DS: How do foreign films differ from
American films, in terms of quality, aims, content, and reach into the culture?
Is it drastically different per country, or is film merely a diversion for most
worldwide?
DD: You load the question at the end by saying “merely a diversion.” Although film can provide a momentary escape or diversion I’m not sure “merely” quite captures the value in that. And one can also say that film provides glimpses into other things at the same time one is trying to be diverted.
As for your question about foreign films:
“foreign films” is too big a category to be of use any longer. Hong Kong films, or Hindi (Bollywood) seem to be closer in
intention to Hollywood than French cinema these days, while we could say that
Japanese cinema offers films that divert and films that challenge and confront.
I’d say this: Hollywood’s
global reach is such that foreign filmmakers have two choices:
try to compete with Hollywood on Hollywood’s terms (China and South
Korea have been doing this lately) or make films that Hollywood won’t or
can’t – and that accounts for the perceptible differences we see between
Hollywood films and foreign films.
DS: Define what constitutes a good
film from a bad one. Give me the parameters. Also, what is the difference
between a good and a great film? Name me a film you think is great and one that
is bad. Define why each is at the level you ascribe to it.
DD: A good film succeeds on the terms it sets forth; a bad one has no idea of what it wants to be. A good film introduces a coherent world, whether or not it corresponds to the real world, and offers up characters who try to succeed within this world, whatever success might mean, while at the same time these characters grow, develop and learn. A bad film presents characters with no inner life, who move through their world as if it could be anything or anywhere. Of course there are films which are simply incompetent – the works of Ed Wood. I don’t agree with the idea of “so bad it’s good.” You can make a very fine film on a low budget if you have talent and creativity or you can make a bad film if you have no talent.
A great film has what I call moments of transcendence – a shot, an insight, something that moves it from the realm of craft into the realm of art. Why is The Searchers the greatest Western ever made out of the thousands produced? It’s great because it has humor and pathos; insight into character; something to say about American heroism and American history; and moments of transcendence, shots of such power and subtlety, acting of depth. As for bad, it would be easy to take Ed Wood, but let’s take a filmmaker who was once very good and who made a film about Ed Wood: Tim Burton. And take Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is a bad movie because it doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be. As happens too often these days, Burton lets Johnny Depp take things too far. What kind of world does Charlie want to offer up and does Depp’s vision of Willie Wonka fit into this world? How are we to feel about Willie and is there, as there should be, any real magic? That’s why it’s as bad movie.
DS: Let us speak of Japanese cinema, and the two commentaries you did for The Criterion Collection. I believe the first one was for Ozu’s Tokyo Story. In my review of it I wrote:
The audio commentary track by Ozu scholar David Desser, editor of Ozu’s Tokyo Story, is surprisingly good, especially considering it’s highly scripted. He seemed to time his comments perfectly for each scene, and explain many in technical detail, as well give backgrounds on the film, Ozu, and the actors. Sometimes he misses some narrative points and gets a bit haughty and moralistic, but often he does well to explain Japanese customs and the politics of the time, and how certain scenes played to Japanese audiences then and global audiences now.
First, how thoroughly do you script your
comments, and do you time them to scenes? Most highly scripted commentaries
never explain scenes well, and are just de facto essays. On the other end of the
spectrum are DVD commentaries from actors, directors or experts that are just
unscripted bits of fellatio where everyone praises everyone else: ‘Ah, the
script boy was wonderful, especially in his selection of Krispy Kremes every day.’
You seem to have struck a balance, in this and the updated release of
Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.
DD: I’m sorry, first of all, that there
were times I sounded a bit haughty and moralistic.
That said, here’s how it worked technically.
I script my commentaries completely beforehand and read along as the film
is projected for me in a studio. Thus
I can see what is happening on the screen as I read along.
Sometimes I will ad-lib and then afterward the producer will ask me
questions to which I will provide unscripted answers and she may insert in lieu
of my scripted remarks. I got a bit formalistic for her tastes and so she asked me
more general questions and then had the audio engineer insert those replies.
DS: Where would you rank both films you
commentated on in world and Japanese cinema canon? Where do you rank Ozu and
Kurosawa in the same context, as well as their pros and cons vis-à-vis each
other?
DD: Interestingly, while Tokyo Story has for years been reckoned as one of the greatest films ever made in all of world cinema, it’s not my favorite of Ozu’s. That distinction goes to Early Summer. And for other people it may be Late Spring – an understandable choice indeed. (Funnily enough the influential Japanese film journal, Kinema Jumpo, awarded both Late Spring and Early Summer their “Best One” award in their respective years of 1949 and 1951, but Tokyo Story only placed second in its year of 1953.) However, I can see why Tokyo Story appeals a bit more to foreigners than the other films. Still, it is a masterpiece and deserves its high praise.
As for Seven Samurai – what can one say at this point? It is, among other things, the most influential film ever made. And that is a large claim, but one that can be substantiated. It is certainly, also, the greatest film ever made about men in combat.
The two films cannot be compared while the two
directors are vastly different. Ozu
is understated, Kurosawa can be bombastic; Ozu is highly consistent in form and
theme, Kurosawa is more varied in subject and setting; Ozu is more accepting of
life’s inevitabilities, Kurosawa seems more of a fighter.
But both have proven hugely influential and that is saying a great deal
about both of them.
DS: What drew you to the cinema of the
Orient vs. European or other cinemas? How does Korean cinema stack up to
Japanese cinema, and other cinemas from the Orient, as well as worldwide?
DD: I simply liked Japanese cinema from the moment I saw it and over the years kept liking it more and more. I do, however, love British cinema and French cinema; I just haven’t published in these areas. So it’s not simply a question of Orient vs. Europe, but rather a scholarly choice made back at a time when much less was written about Japan compared to Europe. But what drew me and kept me….I can’t really say. I am a film lover above all, but there are films that I like less than others in terms of national cinema.
As for Korean – at its best it’s very good.
And there are a handful of absolutely great films that I could point to,
both big budget (like Shiri) and small (like Take Care of My
Cat). Korean films tend to be
as anybody’s, especially at their best.
DS: It seems to me, that in the 1950s and
1960s, Japanese cinema was the best in the world: Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi,
Ichikawa, Kobayashi, Naruse, Imamura, Oshima, Teshigahara, and others. The
range, the writing, the acting, the daring. Not even Italy came close. Do you
think there was just all this pent up creativity from the militaristic
dictatorship of the 30s and 40s? If so, why didn’t Germany explode, like
Japan, and to a lesser extent, Italy, in cinematic greatness?
DD: Ah!
Great question! One could
say that Italy was almost as good: neo-realism
in the period 1943-1952, then the later works of Rossellini and then Fellini and
Antonioni and the early Bertolucci, etc. So
while I agree with you that Japanese cinema was the best in the world in the
50s, especially (by the way – I’d suggest that second best in the world was
India at this time) why Germany was moribund is interesting.
Of course, one thing to consider is that Germany’s finest talent fled
before 1941 or was killed in the Shoah. No
Japanese talent left. Unlike in
Germany, where certain directors and stars who worked for the Nazis were purged
from the industry, no such thing happened in Japan.
Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Kinoshita Keisuke all made
films during the war and then continued thereafter.
And so, too, major stars who made propaganda film in Japan during the war
worked in democracy films thereafter. I
would also say there were structural reasons, as well. All of Germany’s infrastructure was destroyed, whereas
Kyoto, site of many film studios, was spared.
But I think it was mostly the fleeing of Germany’s major talents and
the murder of so many others.
DS: Great answer, and, in retrospect, it
makes eminent sense. The 60s saw the New Wave hit Japan, yet, whereas the French
New Wavers basically just copied American film noir, and tried to pass it off as
something new, the Japanese directors of that time were WAY beyond Godard,
Truffaut, and company, in terms of mastery of skill and richness of vision. Do
you think that the so-called Japanese New Wave was independent of what is
credited to the French, or did they just have better film directors, period?
What is your book, Eros Plus Massacre,
which covers this era, about?
DD: Eros plus Massacre is subtitled “An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema.” I think it turned out to be a bit substantive than that. I do try to situate the New Wave in multiple contexts: as a response on the part of a group of young filmmakers to their place in Shochiku Studios; to Japan in the 1960s; to the Japanese relationship to the US, etc. Yet at the same time I also ended up defining the New Wave in terms of its major concerns: youth, women, the working class, Koreans and other minorities. This had never been done before and I linked fiction films with experimental works and documentaries and I also compared it to theater and literature. In this respect the Japanese New Wave was much more politically and socially engaged than the French New Wave which is often, incorrectly, seen as “political”. Godard became more politically engaged later in the 60s along with Alain Resnais. But the French New Wave was primarily aesthetic, not political.
The Japanese New Wave was completely independent of
the French New Wave in 1960. It was
more influenced by Polish cinema of the late 50s than French, by the way.
The mastery of skill and vision you speak of had something to do with the
fact that most of the major directors were college educated but also products of
the Assistant Director system which trained them in screenwriting, staging,
lighting, etc. It gave them a
better background when it came time to direct their own films.
DS: While not a good film, I found Wim
Wenders’ Tokyo Ga (on the Ozu DVD for Late
Spring) and the excellent documentary I Lived, But...
on the Tokyo Story DVD, to be films that gave a good backgrounding to the life
of Yasujiro Ozu, as well as information on the Japan of the mid-20th
Century, and the films that came out of there. For someone whose idea of
Japanese films was all about Godzilla and giant monsters, these films are a
great help. In the latter film, there is mention of Ozu’s attraction to the
concept of mu, or nothingness. What are your thoughts on this
claim, and how or how not did it set Ozu apart from his contemporaries?
DD: “Mu” is written on one side of
Ozu’s grave marker so it obviously meant something to him.
It is both a Buddhist and aesthetic concept that Ozu relied on, but not
necessarily in an unprecedented manner. We can easily overstate this; Westerners
have proven fond of Buddhist elements in Ozu.
They are there, but so are lots of other things.
DS: I recently watched the Criterion DVD
of Kurosawa’s Red Beard, and commentarian
Stephen Prince criticized some scenes for being too didactic, yet, never are the
films heavyhanded. They exist, in a small sense, with an ethical compass, but
Kurosawa never hammers the points home. Do you see Kurosawa’s canon, as Prince
does, as didactic? Is this a negative? Is didacticism to Kurosawa what mu is to
Ozu?
DD: Yes,
Kurosawa is didactic. It is not a
negative. It stems, in part, from
Confucianism, which insists that all art have a didactic function.
And perhaps you are right in your syllogism about Kurosawa and Ozu.
DS: Re: Kurosawa, I always find it odd
that most critics gush over his samurai period pieces and slag on his
contemporary set films, like Ikiru,
The Bad Sleep Well,
and, especially the transcendent High
And Low. While Kurosawa’s samurai films are masterful action films,
often laced with comedy, and Seven Samurai is the best example of
this, the modern films have a deep vein of humanism and realism the samurai
films lack. By contrast, the two samurai films that I’ve seen of Masaki
Kobayashi, Harakiri
and Samurai
Rebellion, simply do more, and succeed greatly in doing so, than
Kurosawa’s samurai films. They fuse the best of Kurosawa’s action and the
psychological depth of Kurosawa’s modern films. These are the only two
Kobayshi samurai films I’ve seen, so the rest of his work may not be as great,
but do you agree that Kurosawa’s period pieces wrongly overshadow his modern
pieces, and that Kobayashi’s samurai films trump Kurosawa’s?
DD: A couple of things by way of preliminary items:
Ikiru and High and Low are enormously respected in the critical literature on Kurosawa. You can find people who think Ikiru is his best film.
Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion are the only two samurai films that Kobayashi made.
In answer to your query. Yes, people underrate his modern films at the expense of his period films. However, his period films are so good that it is understandable. Still, films like Drunken Angel, Stray Dog and Dodeskaden are vastly underrated. People do indeed pay less attention to them than they deserve. For me High and Low is second only to Seven Samurai at the top of the list of Kurosawa’s best.
As
for Kobayashi – his two samurai films are absolutely masterpieces.
But they have different points to make, different intentions if you will.
One cannot overstate the brilliance of Yojimbo.
DS: Re: Ozu, I think his Japanese bona
fides are overclaimed, and that his films are universal- from their depictions
of little brats and farting, to their scenes of human depth and yearning. Do you
think this as well?
DD: I don’t think his Japanese bona fides
are in doubt, but they may be overstated. Indeed
his films are universal and that is why he is, along with Kurosawa, among the
most influential filmmakers who ever worked, on a par with Fellini, Bergman, and
Antonioni.
DS: Other than yourself, who do you look
to re: Japanese or Oriental cinema, for recommendations of works and directors?
Any thoughts on folks like Stephen Prince or Donald Richie? Personally, I’ll
take your and Prince’s commentaries over Richie’s because, while Richie
certainly was immersed in Japanese culture, I find his understanding of the art
of film to be substantially less. I.e.- his commentaries give excellent
backgrounding of the director, actors, time the film was made, and symbolism,
etc., but he overreaches when he tries to explain why a scene works or not, and
falls into biases of what he likes vs. what is objectively good. Aside from some
moralistic comments in your Tokyo Story commentary, you seem to
understand what makes the film you comment on work, in a more down to earth
sense. Richie, however, is the
perfect example of a film scholar who knows facts but misses the art. Comments?
DD: Stephen Prince produced the best book on
Kurosawa yet written and likely to remain so.
As for Richie – it’s hard to overstate the impact he had on the
introduction of Japanese cinema to the West.
No one, in any field of endeavor perhaps, has been so centrally
associated, so linked, as Donald Richie has been to the Japanese cinema.
But he came from a different generation than Stephen Prince and myself
and so his approach to film was different.
But he was knowledgeable, enthusiastic, kind and generous, a fine man and
a decent one. And that is saying as
lot.
DS: What do you
think of Netflix? A year or two ago they had some troubles when they decided to
raise their rates drastically, then the ill fated and reversed decision to split
into streaming and DVD companies alone? Without such a service I would have
never discovered many of the great Japanese and other foreign directors I
have.In that way I think Netflix is utterly invaluable. Comments on these
matters?
DD: I can’t speak
to their business decisions, but they are invaluable, not just for Japanese
cinema, but Hong Kong, Mainland Chinese, Korean, as well.
I don’t use them myself as I have amassed a huge collection of DVDs,
but down the road I’ll buy less and stream more.
DS: Part of the
reason Netflix decided to raise their rates was because of studios wanting to be
able to eventually stream their own films, but this seems absurd to me because
no one feels a brand loyalty to a studio the way they do to an actor or actress,
or a film director. Who will pay for only Sony or Disney films? Plus, this would
destroy the very desire of people to want to sample a variety of new things on
Netflix. If one has to pay per item, then people like you will be screwed over
by the big studios yet again. What are your thoughts on this?
DD:
You can count on the Hollywood studios to ruin anything that makes films
more accessible and cheaper to more people.
It began with high-priced VHS until market forces brought them down; then
the ruining of laserdiscs and then the stupidity of region-coding on DVDs.
I hope services like Netflix and Moby and others survive in some form
whatever the inevitable changes the future brings.
DS: This, in fact,
is why I think the studios want to destroy Netflix, and also things like Hula,
because, just as with cable tv, they want to be able to force people to pay for
crap they don’t want with bundling, rather than let the free market play out
and allow bad channels and shows to fall away. After all, if I’m a science guy
and only want three or four nature or science or history channels, and no
sports, porno, nor cooking and shopping networks, why can’t I have that?
Netflix operates on that model of choice and sampling. Do you think that this is
the ultimate goal of the Hollywood studios and television networks, to
monopolize and deaden the minds of its viewers, to turn them into zombie
consumers?
DD: Yes.
DS: On the con side, do you think that
Netflix and Hula have basically killed off the Golden Age of DVD commentaries?
Criterion used to be the industry standard, but they’ve basically abandoned
the commentary feature in new releases.
DD: The commentary feature was expensive and
made the DVDs pricier. Perhaps
that’s why they are doing them less often.
You may be right about Netflix and other services indicating that
commentaries have had their day.
DS: Do you think commentaries make for
better viewers? Are they that expensive to produce? What is (or was) the going
rate to provide a commentary of quality- such as you or a Stephen Prince might
do?
DD: As I said, they are expensive to produce
along with the other extras. The
major expense was their attempt to get the best image possible, but they also
made new subtitles, etc. So we’re
talking, besides video transfer, well up around $10K.
DS: Let me ask a few queries that I ask
almost all my interviewees; because this is a series, and the parallax of
replies is of interest to me and my readers. I
started this interview series to combat the aforementioned dumbing down of
culture and discourse- what I call deliteracy, both in the media,
and online, where blogs and websites refuse to post paragraphs with more than
three sentences in it, or refuse to post anything over a thousand words long.
Old tv show hosts like Phil Donahue, Dick Cavetti, David Susskind, Tom Snyder,
even Bill Buckley- love him or hate him, have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Intellect has been killed by emotionalism, simply because the latter is far
easier to claim without dialectic. Only Charlie
Rose, as a big name interviewer, is left on PBS, but near midnight. Let me
ask, what do you think has happened to real discussion in America- not only in
public- political or elsewise, but just person to person? And, even in a small
way, do you think films like yours help to counteract such willful ignorance?
DD: I, too, miss the likes of Dick Cavetti,
David Susskind and Buckley’s “Firing Line.”
And I like your notion of “deliteracy.”
It is unquestionable that something has been lost in public discourse. There are multiple forces at work, but one of them is media
conglomerates. There is simply too
much power concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It’s the profit motive at work, to create synergy across
their media outlets: to create a
brand is more important than to create an educated public. They want consumers, not citizens. Of course, the information overload, tweets rather than
paragraphs, hypertext rather than linearity, shock rather than story, has
something to do with a lack of ability to sustain reason and argument.
Classical Japanese films, the art cinemas of Taiwan or South Korea,
belong solely to the select few – we’re not smarter, but we have developed
the patience and appreciation.
DS: I also believe that artists are
fundamentally different, intellectually, than non-artists, and that the truly
great artists are even more greatly different. Let me quote from an essay I did
on Harold Bloom, the
reactionary critic who champions the Western Canon against Multiculturalism: ‘….the
human mind has 3 types of intellect. #1 is the Functionary- all of us have it-
it is the basic intelligence that IQ tests purport to measure, & it operates
on a fairly simple add & subtract basis. #2 is the Creationary- only about
1% of the population has it in any measurable quantity- artists, discoverers,
leaders & scientists have this. It is the ability to see beyond the
Functionary, & also to see more deeply- especially where pattern recognition
is concerned. And also to be able to lead observers with their art. Think of it
as Functionary2 . #3 is the Visionary- perhaps only 1% of the
Creationary have this in measurable amounts- or 1 in 10,000 people. These are
the GREAT artists, etc. It is the ability to see farther than the Creationary,
not only see patterns but to make good predictive & productive use of them,
to help with creative leaps of illogic (Keats’ Negative Capability), &
also not just lead an observer, but impose will on an observer with their art.
Think of it as Creationary2 , or Functionary3.’ What
are your thoughts on this concept of mine? Have you discerned any differences
between non-artists and artists, or average artists and the greats? And, if you
are copacetic with such a system, where on the scale would you place yourself?
And do you think disciplines like teaching or criticism are 180° from
creativity? Are there some directors you would rank higher or lower on such a
scale?
DD: I don’t believe this at all. Artists do have abilities (or an ability) that non-artists
don’t have, but it doesn’t make them fundamentally different intellectually.
It certainly doesn’t make them better.
I have the ability to write reasonably well. Not
everyone has this talent or ability. That
doesn’t make me fundamentally different.
It is often stated that artists are not the best people to explain or
critique their own work and that such is the job of the critic or scholar.
Maybe so but one or the other is not “better.”
And non-artists and non-critics are not fundamentally different, just
differently talented or abled. I
don’t romanticize the artist nor look up to the critic.
We are all good at something.
DS: Do you believe in The Muse? Divine
Inspiration? I find that many artists use the idea of a Muse or Divine
Inspiration as a crutch for times when their productivity is fallow. I call this
the Divine Inspiration Fallacy.
Any opinions?
DD: No;
don’t believe in divine inspiration or The Muse.
But some artists have a muse.
Hitchcock and Cary Grant; Ford and John Wayne; von Sternberg and
Dietrich. People can inspire, can coax, can help. But there’s no magic, no myth, no god. Talent and hard work.
DS: Some years back I co-hosted an
Internet radio show called Omniversica.
On one show we spoke with a poet named Fred Glaysher, who- in arguing with my
co-host Art Durkee, claimed that, in art, change does not come until some giant-
or great artist, comes along, and buries the rest of the wannabes. It’s akin
to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. Agree
or not? And name some film giants you feel who’ve buried past tropes or styles
with their canon.
DD: In a certain way this goes along with
Harold Bloom’s less bombastic idea of “the anxiety of influence” – that
succeeding artists try NOT to be influenced by the major artists who came
before. I agree with Bloom, not
with Fred Glaysher. But there is
always more than one artist working to affect change or even revolutionary
change. James Joyce was not alone
in his rethinking nor was Picasso nor was D.W. Griffith, etc.
I believe more in movements of groups than singular individuals.
DS: Have you ever watched Michael Apted’s The Up Series documentaries for the BBC? What are your thoughts on it as a longitudinal study of human development? How about sociologically? Do you agree with its epigraph, the Jesuit proverb, ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.’?
DD: I haven’t actually seen the Apted
series, though I think it is unprecedented and fascinating.
Someday… Yes, I agree with the idea.
The importance of teaching and loving little children…
DS: A few less intense queries. That
old chestnut- name a few folk from history you’d like to break bread with, and
why?
DD: From history or film history? I’d like to dine with Jane Austen, chat with Emily Dickinson and take a long walk with Virginia Woolf. It’s just the knight-in-shining armor syndrome. Somehow I’d like to save these women whom I so much admire from loneliness and sadness. Not less intense after all!
I’d like to drink whisky with Howard Hawks and go on safari (with a camera) with John Huston. I’d like to play baseball with Buster Keaton in the 1920s and tell him not to drink so much. These guys seem like the fun figures in film history.
DS: At this point in your life, have you
accomplished the things you wanted to do? If not, what failures gnaw at you the
most? Which of those failures do you think you can accomplish yet?
DD: As I indicated above, I’ve pretty
much accomplished what I wanted to and more.
I don’t think like I’ve failed and have no gnawing regret or sense of
defeat. My family means a lot to me
and spending time with them trumps writing another essay or book.
DS:
Let me close by asking what is in store, in the next year or two, in terms of
your work?
DD: Like I said, at this point another essay takes a back seat to a six-year old girl who needs my attention,
DS: Thanks for doing this interview,
David Desser, and let me allow you a closing statement, on whatever you like.
DD: Thank you for your interest in me and my work. I’m always happy to correspond with people who take film and ideas seriously. You certainly pressed me to think deeply. Thanks.
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