Is this simply because it represents an easier narrative? Or is it the case that Kurosawa’s influence was more secondary than appears at first sight? And yet, in so many ‘general’ books and documentaries on the period (I’d include David Thompsons writings), the constant reiteration of the French New Wave = New Hollywood seems the dominant theory. But for me the connections with the key new Hollywood directors seems very obvious.
I’m aware of the dangers of confirmation bias when looking at influences and links between film makers, and I’m certainly a lot more familiar with Kurosawa than I am with the French New Wave or Italian Neo-realism, etc. On a more indirect level, I don’t think its overstating it to see a distinct thread from Yojimbo via Spaghetti Westerns and Roger Corman to the B-movie strand of later Hollywood films. The fairly direct connection between Kurosawa’s samurai films and Star Wars is very obvious, and I think Spielberg has said that Ikiru was a huge influence on his work. While there is an obvious overlap with French New Wave, the connection with Kurosawa seems to me to be much more direct and obvious. In particular, Kurosawa’s work seems to me to have a directness and muscularity lacking in European cinema at the time, and this is reflected in the best Hollywood dramas/thrillers of the time. When I see films like Taxi Driver or the Godfather, the direct influence from Kurosawa’s later contemporary dramas and thrillers seems very obvious – not just in cinema style, but also in narrative and theme. Now I know that being a huge Kurosawa fan, I’m likely to see his influences everywhere, but it seems to be both from reading about Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg directly, they were hugely influenced by Kurosawa, and in terms of cinema style, he was perhaps their primary influence. If I remember correctly, Kurosawa was only mentioned in passing in the book, while Japanese cinema is never mentioned in the documentary.
Although obviously neither book nor documentary were concerned with detailed analysis, a clear argument was made that it was the freshness of the New Wave, and the way they combined a serious cinephilia with a desire to entertain and grip, that was the primary influence on the New Hollywood auteurs. Its a while since I read the book, but from memory, it says pretty much the same as the documentary, which is that there was a direct line of influence from the French New Wave to the great generation of Hollywood filmmakers of the 1960’s – Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, etc., etc. Its entertaining, although not quite as good as the brilliant book of the same name. Last weekend I caught up with the documentary on the 1970’s Hollywood generation, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
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