DODES 'KA-DEN Movie Review

Clickety Clack

After a five year hiatus following the release of his magnificent Red Beard (a period that also included his brief, disastrous participation in the production of Tora! Tora! Tora!), Akira Kurosawa returned to the screen with this gentle, humane fantasy about the daily lives of the residents of a slum. Based on a previously published collection of short stories, the film's title comes from the sound that one of the residents makes when he imagines himself a uniformed streetcar driver. He repeats the word over and over (not unlike Walter Mitty's “pocketa pocketa”) until it becomes a kind of metaphorical refrain for the courage each of these people demonstrates in simply getting through one more seemingly hopeless day. This was Kurosawa's first film in color, and he uses his bright, fantastic palette to suggest a different emotional tone for each of the stories he tells. Though Dodes 'ka-den is minor Kurosawa, its downright hostile reception by film critics was almost inexplicable (unless a modest picture following a lifetime of masterworks must be judged a catastrophe by comparison). Its reception proved a disaster for its creator as well; less than a year after its release, Kurosawa attempted suicide.

NEXT STOP… The Lower Depths (1957), Red Beard, Kagemusha

1970 140m/C JP Yoshitaka Zushi, Junzaburo Ban, Kiyoko Tange; D: Akira Kurosawa; W: Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni, Akira Kurosawa; C: Takao Saito, Yasumichi Fukuzawa; M: Toru Takemitsu. Nominations: Academy Awards '71: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS NO