Clues in Alain Silver's book 


In search of different information, I've been going through the latest revision of Alain Silver's fine, now lavishly illustrated The Samurai Film (The Overlook Press, 320 pages, $50, ISBN 1 58567 596 2), and it's given me a few Kill Bill tips I didn't get the first time around – which is funny, because Silver doesn't like Kill Bill much.




The scene at Vol. 1 timecode 1:28:07, when the Bride slaps a younger swordsman and tells him to go home to his mother is, as Silver confirms, is a "Sanjuro-style admonishmen" (see page 233).

Meanwhile, Silver helps nail down the source of the water pipe that figures as a ghostly audio cue in the showdown between the Bride and O-Ren Ishii. Hideo Gosha uses a bamboo water pipe "as a kind of punctuation between scenes [page 192]" in his film Tenchu, and the book even provides a helpful illustration.




As I pointed out in the Kill Bill book, which quotes an early version of Silver's section on Kill Bill and other late samurai films, from when the material appeared on line at Senses of Cinema.com, Silver doesn't particularly like Kill Bill, indicating that it essentially deconstructs the genre well in the wake of some home grown directors who have already done the same thing to death.  

 

Posted: Mon - December 19, 2005 at 10:36 AM          

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