A Month of Kurosawa: Dodes’ka-Den (1970)
To celebrate the upcoming release of my book, Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide, due out Dec. 15 from Rowman & Littlefield — preorder here! — I’ll be doing capsule reviews all month covering every single Kurosawa film and posting (very) brief excerpts. These will be short impressions and recommendations, nothing more. For a full, detailed analysis of each, grab the book! Dodes’ka-Den (1970) By the late 1960s, Akira Kurosawa’s career had somewhat skidded off the rails. The situation is too complex with these quickie capsule reviews, but the bottom line is that Toshiro Mifune was out of the picture, Kurosawa was increasingly seen as behind the times, and the director struggled to get funding for his films. That’s the situation in which he made Dodes’ka-Den,…
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