The samurai film

By Alain Silver

Book Overview

The image of a lone hero, marked by a violent past and bound by honor, has exerted an endless fascination on film audiences the world over, but nowhere more than in Japan, where Samurai films have gained legions of passionate followers. Popularized and perfected by one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema, Akira Kurosawa, the themes of the Samurai film have consistently crossed over into western films, with blockbuster success in recent years of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Last Samurai, and Kill Bill. Some notable films American audiences hold dear are adaptations of Kurosawa films, among them The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars-even Star Wars took inspiration from one of his films. Long regarded as one of the world's most astute film analysts, Alain Silver deconstructs the key aspects of this vital film genre, from its focus on violence and death as a means of understanding life (an aspect it shares to a great extent with its western counterpart) and the significance of swords and weaponry to key elements and motifs such as hara-kiri, rebellion, and nostalgia for Japan's feudal past. With comprehensive filmographies of the major directors and films, a survey of the history and myths of the Samurai, a glossary of Japanese terms, and more than 200 hundred photos, this revised and expanded edition of The Samurai Film is the ultimate resource for one of world cinema's most influential and compelling genres.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0498013499
• ISBN13: 9780498013492
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: A. S. Barnes
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Alain Silver. Samurai Film.

The book is in good condition with intact dust jacket. The book came quickly. I'm delighted with the purchase. I've been looking for a copy of The Samurai Film.

The Best Book for the Best Samurai Films

Well-known and respected film critic Alain Silver has written what should be the definitive work on the (true) samurai film. These are movies made in Japan, and the best ones, the ones that are more than just action films, have something to say. These great directors like Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Gosha, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kihachi Okamoto were seeking to find answers to today's problems in the historical past. This book is excellent if you want to learn about these men, their movies, and Japanese history/culture. The updated edition even covers new stuff, like later samurai movies that are not as good (the genre really lost something when this first generation of directors left and samurai films began to get made for their own sake). And it mentions American cinema, from The Last Samurai to Kill Bill, movies that were inspired by these great old films of the 50's and 60's and which pale in comparison. Yes, Silver is extrmely analytical, so you have to actually want to understand cinema to make it through this. He discusses technique, especially the visual style of the director (lighting, camera movement, compostion, type of lens, etc.) and you Tarantino or Cruise fans aren't going to be able to stomach all that.

Frist Review!!

If you are the type of person viewed by others as strage because of your attraction for dubbed, 60s-era, b & w Samurai movies (if not for many other reasons), you will be buoyed by the knowledge presented in this book: That the directors and scriptwriters who produced many of these chambarra were beyond talented, and that the subject matter (of bushido and personal relationships within the cultural and personal codes of conduct of historical Japan) is a worthy lense for the artistic presentation/examination of the human condition. I believe that's one honkin' runon sentence, and quite against recommended practice, but there it is. This book will be invaluable for the not-so-knowledgeable chambarra enthusiast who, like me, still needs a little help to differentiate the wheat from the chaff...and the gold from the wheat, for that matter. That there is plenty of chaff is substantiated by the hundreds-long fimlography of Samurai films through the 80s appended. The representative titles in the "Foreign" section of too many video stores would seem to come randomly from this list. As in America, some of the most popular product was pretty much crap, and some of the best directors occasionally had modest success with good work. The book is a great guide to the directors whose work exhibits strong craft and intellectual depth. Knowing to look for Gosha or Kobiyashi in a selection of unknown-but-presumably-random quality has proven very rewarding. NOTE: The book is very strong on analysis of their cinematographic choices and techniques. And when I say "strong", I mean there's huge gobs of it. Silver certainly sounds competent, but this level of analysis will be of greater or lesser interest to different people, depending on how deeply one has sunk into Le Pit du Cineasterie.