Eclipse 1943: 姿三四郎

This is the first DVD on the Early Kurosawa box set. Here’s my most controversial opinion ever: Kurosawa’s just not that good, eh? So I’m actually kinda excited about seeing these movies, because he’s certainly got something going on, and perhaps it wasn’t all covered in schmaltz when he was young?

Let’s find out.

This starts off pretty neat… but it’s obviously got some technical issues: some scenes are just too dark? But otherwise good.

It’s The Saga of the Sandal!

No, I didn’t quite understand what that was about, either.

The opening titles (from 1952) apologised about bits of this movie going missing during the wartime censorship, so perhaps that explains why this movie doesn’t really make much sense? It’s a series of scenes — some that are pretty good, and some that are moronic — more than a narrative.

Hey! Shochiku!

Wow, this is stupid.

But it looks good from time to time.

Man, this is so stupid. It’s like distilled Kurosawa.

Sanshiro Sugata. Akira Kurosawa. 1943.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

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