One of the hallmarks of the 60's and early 70's, at least where film was concerned, was how foreign films managed to find an audience in this country. Antonioni, Bergman, and Truffaut became, if not household names, then at least well known here, and a term Truffaut helped invent - the autuer, or author - became a long-lasting model of identification (the director, whom French critics-turned-directors like Truffaut thought was the author of the film, became the most well known aspect of the film, i.e., Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER) and critical theory (following the career of a director). And not only did these foreign films make impacts in of themselves, they became influences in how American films borrowed from them (Bergman's PERSONA certainly has had a lot of rip-offs, and Mike Nichols' early films like THE GRADUATE and CATCH-22 are obviously influenced by Fellini and Godard in terms of technique) and how American filmmakers were influenced by them (Spielberg cast Truffaut in CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND in homage, since Truffaut, like Spielberg, often saw through the eyes of a child). But even at the height of their popularity, foreign films have often been on the fringe; most people in this country don't like to read subtitles, while at the same time don't like dubbed films (perhaps remembering the badly dubbed Godzilla movies of the 50's), and plots of foreign films are often more complex and open-ended than of Hollywood films. So in the late 70's and the 80's, when the blockbuster ruled again, it's no surprise that foreign films returned to the fringe. In the 90's, however, foreign films became caught in sort of a paradox: they continued moving towards the fringe, but some of them (LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL) set box-office records. Time will tell if this a comeback or a last gasp. In 1990, anyway, while foreign films weren't prevalent, they at least were there, as demonstrated by AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS, Giuseppe Tornatore's EVERYBODY'S FINE, and Zhang Yimou's JU DOU.
Kurosawa, of course, was one of the old masters (this was one of his last films before his death in 1998); his name is often at the top of the list of the greatest directors ever, he's long been popular here because he's consistently drawn on Western sources for his movies (THE SEVEN SAMURAI is heavily influenced by John Ford movies, while RAN is a version of King Lear), and Hollywood has often remade him (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, of course, was a remake of THE SEVEN SAMURAI), and been influenced by him (STAR WARS, as Lucas has acknowledged, owes a debt to THE HIDDEN FORTRESS). It's therefore a bit ironic that DREAMS would be one of his least accessible films, though it's still a good one.
The copyright of the article FOREIGN AFFAIRS: DREAMS, EVERYBODY'S FINE, JU DOU in Movies of the 90s is owned by . Permission to republish FOREIGN AFFAIRS: DREAMS, EVERYBODY'S FINE, JU DOU in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
