Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Kurosawa

  • Medicine and cinema—A cultural symbiosis

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom   Fig 1. Poster for Chaplin film City Lights. 1931. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. For doctors and lovers of cinema, 1895 was an important year. On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a fifty-year-old professor of physics, discovered X-rays in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany. On March 22 1895, the…

  • The bedside manners of Ingmar Bergman’s celluloid physicians

    Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The great humanitarian filmmaker and auteur Ingmar Bergman used physicians in his films much more frequently than his peers. Bergman’s full filmography, including two films (Thirst and Brink of Life) directed by but not written by Bergman, features sixteen physicians in thirteen films. Excluding the family doctor in Fanny and…

  • Unfinished business: end of life care and regrets in the films of Akira Kurosawa

    X.M. Griffiths Tuckahoe, NY, USA   Director Akira Kurosawa (center) with actors Takashi and Miki Odagiri on the set of Ikiru (1952). Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. Death and mortality were recurrent themes in Akira Kurosawa’s works but the director examined the issues most acutely in the films Ikiru (1952) and…