case Study Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray are two very different filmmakers who also share some surprising similarities. Kurosawa had seen over 100 foreign films by the time he was nineteen, in 1929 (Richie 2005: 28). Ray was born into a politically active family and initially worked as an advertising illustrator (Rajadhyaksha 1996: 682). As filmmakers, however, they both had to negotiate combining a Western developed media with their own cultural traditions and expectations. They also had to negotiate developing their artistic visions, while working under very powerful studio systems. That they both succeeded speaks highly for their abilities to make that negotiation.
Coming to the cinema later than Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray was influenced by meeting French Realist director Jean Renoir, but it was seeing the neo-realist The Bicycle Thieves (De Sica 1948) that convinced him to become a filmmaker (Rajadhyaksha 1996: 682). Probably his most famous work outside of India is Pather Panchali (1955), based on a Bengali fictional work from the early twentieth century. Set in rural Bengal of the 1920s, the film focuses on the lives of Apu and his family members, living in their ancestral home in Nischindipur. The family is impoverished — the father earns an insufficient living as a priest. Apu's mother takes care of the two children, Apu and his older sister Durga, and her elderly sister-in-law, Indir. Durga often steals fruit from a neighbor's orchard and shares it with Aunt Indir, with whom she feels affinity. Durga even steals a bead necklace, though she later denies taking it. Apu and Durga share a close relationship and an important portion of the movie relates this relationship. Apu's father travels to nearby cities to search for better employment, promising his wife that he will return with money. Unfortunately, the family's economic situation gets even worse in his absence. Durga, Apu's sister, catches a cold while playing in the rain, develops a fever, and dies. Apu's father eventually returns home to discover that his daughter has died. The family decides to leave the village. The film ends with Apu and his parents leaving their home in an ox-cart. Ray's commitment to shooting in a neo-realist style was not always welcomed by the Indian studio system he operated within and led to a series of problems (Rajadhyaksha 1996: 682). However, Pather
Panchali was a major success and led to two sequels (possibly at Nehru's suggestion), called the Apu Trilogy. Ray's Realist cinema worked well in the early days of post-Independence India - indeed his films corresponded well with the goals and agendas of post-Independence Indian governments, who in turn promoted the development of an Indian art cinema. However, by the 1960s the changing political and social landscapes in India were no longer a good fit for this style of representation. During the late 1950s and into the 1960s Ray's films became more stylized, focusing more on psychological interactional set pieces. The upheavals of the 1970s were reflected in Ray's films of the period as melodramas about the collapse of traditional Indian social values and the failure of the elite to deal with the problem (Rajadhyaksha 1996: 683). Ironically, the Indira Gandhi government was simultaneously promoting Ray's Realist films as what authentic Indian cinema should be (as opposed to Bollywood escapism). Ray began making commercially successful children's films, and though some did satirize the failures of the Indian state, for the most part Ray removed himself from the political sphere.
Akira Kurosawa grew up watching film while the benshi were still a powerful presence in Japanese cinemas. At the same time Kurosawa is perhaps the most "Western" of any Japanese filmmaker of that era - he is certainly often depicted thus by many Japanese and Western film scholars (Richie 2005: 176). Kurosawa's films, while firmly sited in Japan are nevertheless told in Western idioms, for instance, in Rashomon (1950), which ushered Japanese cinema into the Western art cinema world, is the tale of the murderous attack on a samurai. The film contains four different versions of the murder, expressing what some commentators view as a uniquely Western concept, that truth is relative. The director of the studio that made Rashomon and many Japanese commentators as well as the Japanese cinema audience were skeptical of the film and it was not commercially or critically successful in Japan. Kurosawa believed that Japanese audiences and critics distrusted a film that was successful with Western audiences. This may be where some of the claims of Kurosawa's "Western-ness" come from. Further, Kurosawa's films are often also read as being about the shift from a feudal to a more modern or democratic society - something that Kurosawa himself denied. As with Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa worked largely within the Realist tradition, his films often dealt with social problems and human nature (Komatsu 1996: 716; Cousins 2004: 212). Kurosawa's early and prolific exposure to Western cinema paid off in his ability to combine and refine techniques and ideas from both Hollywood and European cinemas effectively. Kurosawa often adapted Western literary classics and yet was also openly admiring of Hollywood studio era filmmakers like John Ford. Ford's westerns were the inspiration behind Kurosawa's films The Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). These films in turn inspired American filmmakers like Sturges who remade The Seven Samurai as The Magnificent Seven (1960), and European filmmakers like Leone (A Fist Full of Dollars 1964) who would influence Hollywood filmmakers in the late 1960s and 1970s (Komatsu 1996: 716). The themes of Kurosawa's films, especially their focus on humanity, came to be seen as old-fashioned and irrelevant to the politically and socially volatile 1960s. Unlike Ray, Kurosawa overcame his artistic and personal problems (such as his attempted suicide in 1971), directing two classic epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), and more human scale dramas in the 1990s (Komatsu 1996: 716).
Both Ray and Kurosawa were successful both at home as well as in foreign markets. There are several reasons for this, but an important issue here is a characteristic that the two share, which is their ability to combine the "grammar" of Western with culturally relevant and specific aesthetics, ideologies, and narratives. Ray combined neo-Realist filmmaking techniques with an Indian narrative, synthesizing the two to produce a masterpiece of cinema. Kurosawa combined the Realist tradition with specifically Japanese stories, though as with Rashomon, he was not averse to experimenting with different ways to tell that story. That both directors worked within a readily understood Western film tradition both helped and hindered their careers. As too did the fact that both operated within relatively powerful studio systems, which provided them both with resources and personnel, but also were generally financially and artistically conservative. As long as both directors were making successful films, the system helped them, but until they established their ability to produce hits and when they did not produce a hit, the converse of the benefits of the studio system was that they could also constrain the directors. When Ray and Kurosawa were able to successfully blend Western cinematic codes and conventions, with Indian or Japanese culturally relevant elements, they produced films that served to translate the former to a Western audience without alienating the local audience. When they were not successful, as with Rashomon, both also faced criticism and artistic crises. Predominately, however, both Ray and Kurosawa successfully navigated the two sets of expectations and assumptions, providing cinema with two of its most eloquent champions.
As noted, numerous forces were operating in opposition to the Hollywood studio system, and they began to chip into the edifice in different ways. American demographic changes, such as the growth of suburbs, led to a decline in audiences. In 1948, the government put in place laws to break up studio ownership of theatre chains and bring an end to unfair trade practices such as "block booking" (forcing independent theatres to accept "blocks" of films in order to get premier movies). Government action on issues such as block booking will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Further, the increasing disquiet of the very stars and big-name directors the studios depended upon began to come to a head. The more "artistic" resistance to Hollywood also began to filter back into the system after the Second World War.
Neo-realism especially began to influence American filmmakers - not always for artistic reasons, however; a "cinema of real life" was much cheaper for the studios to produce (Morandini 1996a). One of the genres most influenced by neo-realism, and particularly suited to the immediate post-Second World War era was film noir. As Parkinson states, film noir is "[e]ssentially a 'cinema of moral anxiety'" and that moral anxiety combined with cinematic innovations, and indeed exiled filmmakers from Europe, into (usually) crime and detective stories was a heady brew - and commercially very successful. The pessimistic and cynical portrayal of American society that noir portrayed so clearly did not sit well with everyone, however. The very success of film noir may have contributed to the McCarthy witch-hunt for communists and communist sympathizers in Hollywood during the late 1940s and early 1950s (Parkinson 1995: 158-9). For a sense of the fear and paranoia of the period, see Clooney's 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck.
While in itself the McCarthy period did not kill off the studio system, it did severely damage Hollywood at a time it could ill afford it. Political, aesthetic, technological, and social changes were coming too quickly for a dazed and safety-first Hollywood to cope with. Increasingly, studios had to bargain for the services of actors and directors, and budgets once again became an important issue. New technologies were introduced to try to win audiences back, widescreen and color in particular, which made budgets even tighter. As when sound was introduced, Hollywood's reaction was to try to limit damage by producing commercially "safe" films. While American cinema was struggling with change, European cinemas were flourishing (Vincendeau 1996) - art cinema in France in particular built on ideas of auteurism, cinéma vérité, and intentionality and led to the French New Wave filmmakers (e.g. Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol). In Britain, a form of social commentary cinema was developing, often sited in the industrial north of England, featuring disenfranchised youths and their milieu, these "kitchen sink" dramas were in response to both Hollywood and the legacy of banal "quota quickies" in Britain (Parkinson 1995: 185-95; Cousins 2004: 186-216).10 Both cinéma vérité and the British kitchen sink dramas shared a distaste for the romanticism of Hollywood and Hollywood-esque film and for the escapism and conformity of many of the films being made at the time. The work of Godard (such as Breathless 1959) and Truffaut (Jules et Jim 1961), for example, was artful and experimental, possibly even disingenuous at times in playing with the codes and conventions of cinema as known at the time. In Godard's Breathless, for instance, the director subverts one of the oldest codes in film editing, that when you have a jump cut (a direct transition from one scene to another) it is to show something else. Godard makes nine jump cuts to the same scene, of the back of actress Jean Seberg's head, with the only changes being of background and the way the light is falling on her head (Cousins 2004: 269). This may seem a fairly trivial difference, but it is almost like a friend asking how you are doing and then walking away without waiting for you to reply. Godard was purposefully miscommunicating with his audience — by breaking with an expected and established "grammar" of that shot he draws attention to the film and to the created-ness of his film. In Week End (1967), he actively provokes, challenges, and even alienates his viewer by his uncompromising use of long takes, like a 10-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam and the irredeemable unpleasantness of the main characters.
The social realist films being produced in Britain were also challenging the status quo, but as the name suggests through a more-or-less direct social commentary rather than through artistic license. Films like Look Back in Anger (Richardson 1959) or This Sporting Life (Anderson 1963) were intense commentaries on life in Britain and British society. Focused almost exclusively on male protagonists and typically depicting working-class life, frequently in the north of England, these films were in many ways as distant from the French New Wave as they could possibly be, yet there was a shared dissatisfaction and provocative rebelliousness that was mutually nourishing these disparate filmic endeavors (Petrie 1996; Cousins 2004: 298-300). The films from this era of British filmmaking were unrepentantly social statements from leftist perspectives. The "warts and all" portrayals meant that it was easy to sympathize with the characters even as it was difficult to like them. An example of this is Billy Liar (Schlesinger 1963), the story of a young man, Billy Fisher (Tom Courtney) in the north of England who, dissatisfied with his life, makes up a fantasy world of lies and exaggerations by which to escape reality. Having stretched the truth too many times with his friends and family, they nevertheless stick by him, even if (as with his parents) they do not entirely understand him or what motivates his lies and fantasies. Just as his lies begin to have serious consequences, he meets free spirit Liz (Julie Christie), who offers him the opportunity to really escape his humdrum life. While the moralizing can be a little thick at times, as a portrait of life in the north of England in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the film is very good social history. It also captures England on the brink of the Swinging Sixties, and the creation of London as the music and fashion capital - at least of Europe. This is brought home at the end of the film where Liz (the perfect representation of what is to come) is leaving for London on the train, expecting Billy to come with her. The doubts and realities are too much for Billy, and for all of his bluster and pontificating, he stays behind. Ironically, the Swinging Sixties hinted at in Billy Liar would replace the "kitchen sink" dramas with frothy lightweight fare (Petrie 1996: 605; Cousins 2004: 299-300), leaving those dramas behind with as much finality as Liz leaves Billy.
Europe was changing as least as much as the USA, and both the French New Wave and British social realist films gave way to new cinema trends. In America as well times had changed, the cracks in the edifice were too deep, and by 1960
the Hollywood studio system had broken down. The collapse of the studio system forced American cinema to retrench. Independent studios and filmmakers began experimenting with new visual and narrative styles as well as more "adult" content (Cousins 2004: 333—6). Grittier, edgier films began to replace some of the genre films. Spaghetti westerns (so called because the directors and much of the cast were Italian) such as A Fistful of Dollars (Leone 1964), which was based on the screenplay for Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), and Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone 1968) replaced the white hat-wearing good guys of the American western, like Roy Rogers or Tom Mix, with violent and morally ambiguous anti-heroes such as Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef (Parkinson 1995: 202; Morandini 1996b: 592-4; Cousins 2004: 286-8). Independent studios as well as the major studios began to target youth audiences with low budget films and different varieties of exploitation films, such as blaxploitation and sexploitation. These two genres are exactly what they sound like: films that exploit particular groups such as black culture or women (respectively). Blaxploitation films in particular have a controversial place in cinema history as they presented very stereotyped aspects of urban American culture (pimps, gangs, drugs, and violence). However, they were almost the only opportunity for black actors and directors to have leading roles in American films (Pines 1996). Sexploitation films on the other hand were less ambiguous - they did not open opportunities for either the actresses or female directors.11 However, they were often made by some of the mavericks of the immediate post-studio system era, such as Roger Corman and Russ Meyers (Newman 1996), who provided some of the biggest names of the following decade (and beyond) their opportunity in the industry: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme — not to mention Jack Nicholson, Peter Hopper, and Sylvester Stallone (Newman 1996: 513). Directly and indirectly, their role in the development of post-studio system Hollywood was significant (Newman 1996: 513—14). A further development that would have long-term effects was the arrival of a new generation of "cine-literate" filmmakers, like the aforementioned Coppola and Scorsese, as well as directors such as Allen and Spielberg. With films like Taxi Driver (Scorsese 1976), the 1970s ushered in the age of the Hollywood auteur, and these cinephile directors would lead the charge (Parkinson 1995: 248). For the reasons mentioned above, the 1970s and early 1980s would come to be seen as a period of experimentation, of pushing boundaries, and of director-focused film projects. Sometimes referred to as New Hollywood, the films of this period were influenced by European art cinema and Japanese films, especially those of Akira Kurosawa, and probably most importantly for the studios could connect with the youth audience (Parkinson 1995: 245—7; Gomery 1996). Realism and countercultural themes were the order of the day. When I show films from the 1970s to students in their twenties, they are often surprised — even shocked — by the
- Figure 1.8 Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (M. Scorsese 1976). [Credit: Columbia / The Kobal Collection]
graphic, sometimes gratuitous, portrayals of sex and violence, as well as the moral and intellectual challenge some of the films made of the audience. To be fair though, they also commented on what passed for "special effects," the slow pace, and the relatively poor production values. As the Hollywood studios struggled to keep in touch with their audience, many of these directors would have a large role in events to come - though not always for the good.
One of the demands that most of these directors made of the studios was that to make successful films the directors had to have creative and budgetary control over the pictures. Successes by the New Hollywood directors led each of them in turn to make more and more extravagant demands. There began to be a public perception that Hollywood was out of control (Cousins 2004: 385-6). The career of Michael Cimino is a case in point. After a minor hit with his directing debut, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), and huge critical and commercial success with The Deer Hunter (1978), Cimino's career seemed set. Then came Heaven's Gate (1980). Given absolute control over the project by United Artists, Heaven's Gate ran several times over budget due to Cimino's extravagant demands, becoming a financial disaster. The film came to symbolize everything wrong with Hollywood, and Cimino's career never recovered. The results were just as devastating for United Artists as the studio was nearly bankrupted by the film and this ultimately led to the sale of the studio. Between the disasters of Heaven's Gate and Coppola's One from the Heart (1982) New Hollywood had come to an end, but a new paradigm was already pushing Hollywood into a new phase. In 1975, a film about a shark (Spielberg's Jaws) changed the cinema industry in ways felt to the present day (Gomery 1996: 479; Cousins 2004: 381-3).
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