SOURCE: "Memory and Nostalgia in Kurosawa's Dream World," in Post Script, Vol. 11, No. 1, Fall 1991, pp. 28-39.

[Below, Prince gives a detailed summary of the progression of themes in Kurosawa's film career. He shows how the sequences in the film Dreams revisits the subjects of earlier works and reflects changes in Kurosawa's philosophy.]

Dreams is Kurosawa's twenty-eighth film and is, in every respect, a work of the director's late period. It represents a last and perhaps final permutation of his visual style, offers an exploration of the moral, psychological, and social significance of the dream-work, and marks a turning point in the five-year production cycles that have marked Kurosawa's most recent films. Consistent with every film since Red Beard (1965), Dreams was in gestation for a period of four to five years, with Kurosawa beginning work on the screenplay in 1986. Now, however, Kurosawa has already embarked upon his next film...