I was sad to read today about the death of Kon Ichikawa, director of films like Harp of Burma and Fires on the Plain, Tokyo Olympiad, The Key, An Actor's Revenge, etc. - while he wasn't exactly neglected in this country, he has never been counted in the upper echelon of Japanese directors (not that being in the upper echelon ensures having their films available: Naruse is usually rated among the best, but very few of his films are circulating in the US in any form). And while he may not be quite the equal of the best - Ozu and Mizoguchi, Naruse and Imamura, Kurosawa - he's not far off. And that is very heady company.
It's depressing to see this is my first post in a week. I wish I had more to offer just now... I should have more to offer in the next few days. One thing keeping me off line was a Jose Luis Guerin retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive - that was very inspiring. I hope to get back to thinking about it, and write something up. And Ichikawa deserves some attention. So I can hope to have some content in the next couple days...
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Ichikawa's problem was that his period of greatest creativity stretched only from around 1950 through 1965. The stress and strain of making "Tokyo Olympiad" and the retirement of Natto Wada from script writing seem to have largely sapped his creativity -- permanently. For 40 years, he largely made dispensable films.
Now making 40 years of forgettable fims doesn't _actually_ change the value of the earlier 15 years worth of great films, but it did tend to diminish his stature -- especially with those who had little knowledge of the wide array of amazing films from his great period.
That's true - I was looking through the films I saw when the retrospective played here - they were surprisingly consistently good - but all but 3-4 were from before 65. I still liked the later films I saw, and The Wanderers, I Am A Cat and the Makioka Sisters measured up pretty well to the older ones - but I know he made a lot of other films, that were probably omitted for a reason... Still - those 50s and 60s films do hold up - from what I've seen, I think he was even more consistently good than Kurosawa at the same time, if maybe nothing matches Kurosawa's best.
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