Editing Dodes'ka-den (section)

==Production==
Five years had elapsed since the release of [[Akira Kurosawa]]'s last film, ''[[Red Beard]]'' (1965). The Japanese film industry was collapsing as the major studios were slashing their production schedules or shutting down entirely due to television stealing the movie audience.<ref name="prince"/> When Kurosawa was let go from the American film ''[[Tora! Tora! Tora!]]'' by [[Twentieth Century Fox]] in 1969, it was rumored that the Japanese director's mental health was deteriorating. [[Teruyo Nogami]], Kurosawa's frequent script supervisor, believes the director needed to make a good film to put that rumor to rest.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> ''Dodes'ka-den'' was made possible by Kurosawa forming the Club of the Four Knights production company with three other Japanese directors; [[Keisuke Kinoshita]], [[Masaki Kobayashi]], and [[Kon Ichikawa]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Dodes'ka-den|publisher=Criterion|url=https://www.criterion.com/films/1083-dodes-ka-den|access-date=2021-01-18}}</ref> It was their first and only production.<ref name="prince"/>

It marks a stylistic departure from Kurosawa's previous works. It has no central story and no protagonist. Instead it weaves together the stories of a group of characters living in a slum as a series of anecdotes.<ref name="prince"/> It was his first color film, and he had only ever worked with a few of the actors previously; [[Kamatari Fujiwara]], [[Atsushi Watanabe (actor, born 1898)|Atsushi Watanabe]], [[Kunie Tanaka]], and Yoshitaka Zushi.<ref name="prince"/> It marks the first time Kurosawa had used [[Takao Saito (cinematographer)|Takao Saito]] as principal cinematographer, and Saito became his "cinematographer of choice" for the rest of his career.<ref name="prince"/> Nogami said that Kurosawa told the crew that this time he wanted to make a film that is "sunny, light, and endearing."<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> She speculated that ''Dodes'ka-den'' was his rebuttal to what went wrong on ''Tora! Tora! Tora!''. The script supervisor of the film opined that the director was still recuperating from the shock of what happened on that Hollywood film, and was not operating at full strength.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> Nogami said that she gets choked up whenever she watches the scene where Rokuchan is called "trolley crazy" by children, because she imagines Kurosawa as the boy, with people yelling "Movie-crazy" at him.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> Kurosawa said that he wanted to show younger filmmakers that it did not need to cost a lot of money to make a movie.<ref name=var>{{cite magazine|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|page=2 |title=Shuns Fests, But Kurosawa To Russ|date=August 11, 1971}}</ref> David A. Conrad wrote that an influence of the surging [[Japanese New Wave]] can be felt in this impulse and in the decision to focus on outcasts in contemporary society.<ref>Conrad, David A. (2022). ''Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan'', 176, McFarland & Co.</ref>

===Filming===
In contrast to ''Red Beard'', which was in production for two years, filming for ''Dodes'ka-den'' began on April 23, 1970, and was finished in only 27 days, two months ahead of schedule.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/><ref name="prince"/> According to [[Stephen Prince]], it was shot for standard-ratio [[35 mm movie film]] rather than the [[anamorphic widescreen]] that Kurosawa had used since ''[[The Hidden Fortress]]'' (1958). Prince writes that this was because the director did not like how anamorphic lenses handled color information.<ref name="prince"/> As a result, it marks a return to the [[Fullscreen (aspect ratio)|1.33:1 aspect ratio]] he used regularly in the 1940s and early 1950s.<ref name="prince"/> Prince also states that ''Dodes'ka-den'' marks the first time the director used zoom lenses; a sign of the "speed and economy" with which he made the film.<ref name="prince"/> Nogami stated that she had never seen Kurosawa as "quiet and undemanding" on set as he was for ''Dodes'ka-den''. As an example, she explained how during a nine-minute scene that had to be shot in one take, [[Junzaburō Ban]] had trouble memorizing all of his dialogue and caused numerous retakes. Nogami said "the old Kurosawa" would have lost his temper and started yelling, but instead he just gently said "let's try it again." and eventually praised Ban when the shot was finally completed.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> Nogami also related how Fujiwara was well-known for not being able to memorize his lines. While filming an eight-minute scene with Watanabe, Kurosawa finally had had enough and had Nogami give Fujiwara verbal prompts. Nogami said her voice was hard to remove from the final tape.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/> The drawings that cover the walls of Rokuchan's house were initially drawn by Kurosawa at home. But he decided they were too "grown-up", and had schoolchildren draw them instead.<ref name="criterionbooklet"/>

===Title===
The film's title "''Dodeska-den''" are the playacting "words" uttered by the boy character to mimic the sound of his imaginary trolley car in motion. It is not a commonly used [[onomatopoeia|onomatopoeic]] word in the Japanese vocabulary, but was invented by author [[Shūgorō Yamamoto]] in ''{{illm|Kisetsu no Nai Machi|ja|季節のない街}}'' (''A City Without Seasons''), the original novel on which the film was based. In standard Japanese language, this sound would be described as ''gatan goton'', equivalent to "clickity-clack" in English.{{Refn|group="lower-alpha"|More specifically, it is the sound that the trolley makes as it passes over the [[Track (rail transport)#Joining rails|joints in the rail]].<ref>{{citation|last=Yamamoto |first=Shūgoro |title=Kisetsu no nai machi |work=Yamamoto Shugoro shosetsu zenshu (collected works) |volume=17 |year=1969 |orig-year=1962 |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lyQVAQAAMAAJ|language=ja}}</ref>}}{{sfnp|Mellen|1972|p=20}}