Kon Ichikawa - James Quandt

Prominent scholars discuss the films of acclaimed Japanese director Kon Ichikawa.

Kon Ichikawa (b. 1915) has long been inter-nationally acknowledged as one of the most accomplished and prolific masters of Japanese cinema, in the exalted company of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu. Celebrated for his many adaptations of famous Japanese novels, such as Fires on the Plain, Harp of Burma, Kagi, Conflagration, and The Makioka Sisters, Ichikawa is an artist with an astounding command of many genres, forms, and tones, from ferociously humanist war films to sophisticated social satires, formalist documentaries (the acclaimed Tokyo Olympiad), to extravagant period pieces (An Actor's Revenge).

Contributors include David Desser, Linda Erlich, Aaron Gerow, Keiko McDonald, Tony Rayns, Donald Richie, Catherine Russell, Tadao Sato, Max Tessier, and Dennis Washburn. A new career-retrospective interview with critic Mark Schilling is one of several illuminating discussions with the director in this volume. Appraisals of Ichikawa by novelist Yukio Mishima, director Yasuzo Masumura, and critic Pauline Kael round out the portrait of a director prized for his elegant compositional style, venomous wit, and unerring humanism.

Cinematheque Ontario Monographs (a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group)