Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [100]
After we finished writing Drunken Angel, Uekusa disappeared again. But our separation at this point was not caused by that terrible gap, that unbridgeable gulf that Uekusa claims he found between our fundamental natures. Nothing so serious as that. That’s only his excuse. What in fact occurred was that he became restless and took up his strange old habit of wandering once again.
Proof that our fundamental differences are not differences at all lies in the fact that when I was gathering reference material to write this thing resembling an autobiography, Uekusa came and spent an evening talking to me with visible enjoyment. He enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he came back to talk again, forgot the time and ended up spending the night. In other words, Uekusa and I are just very good friends from our days of battling on stilts: we are fighting friends.
Drunken Angel
IT’S NOT POSSIBLE for me to talk about Drunken Angel, which was released in 1948, without devoting some attention to the actor Mifune Toshiro. In June of 1946, in order to get into the spirit of postwar activity, Toho conducted open auditions to recruit new contract actors. Using the headline “Wanted: New Faces,” they got a tremendous number of applicants.
On the day of the interviews and screen tests I was in the middle of the shooting of No Regrets for Our Youth, so I couldn’t participate in the judging. But during lunch break I stepped off the set and was immediately accosted by actress Takamine Hideko, who had been the star of Yamamoto Kajirō’s Horses when I was chief assistant director. “There’s one who’s really fantastic. But he’s something of a roughneck, so he just barely passed. Won’t you come have a look?” I bolted my lunch and went to the studio where the tests were being given. I opened the door and stopped dead in amazement.
A young man was reeling around the room in a violent frenzy. It was as frightening as watching a wounded or trapped savage beast trying to break loose. I stood transfixed. But it turned out that this young man was not really in a rage, but had drawn “anger” as the emotion he had to express in his screen test. He was acting. When he finished his performance, he regained his chair with an exhausted demeanor, flopped down and began to glare menacingly at the judges. Now, I knew very well that this kind of behavior was a cover for shyness, but the jury seemed to be interpreting it as disrespect.
I found this young man strangely attractive, and concern over the judges’ decision began to distract me from my work. I returned to my set and wrapped up the shooting early. Then I proceeded to look in on the room where the jury were deliberating. Despite Yama-san’s strong recommendation of the young man, the voting was against him. Suddenly I heard myself shouting, “Please wait a minute.”
The jury was made up of two groups: movie-industry specialists (directors, cinematographers, producers and actors) and representatives of the labor union. The two groups were equally represented. At that time the union was gaining in strength daily, and union representatives appeared wherever something was happening. Because of them, all decisions had to be made by voting, but I felt that for them to voice their opinions on the selection of actors was really going too far. Even the expression “going too far” doesn’t do justice to the suppressed anger boiling in me. I called for a time out.
I said that in order to judge the quality of an actor and predict his future capacities you need the talents and experience of an expert. In the selection of an actor it isn’t right to equate the vote of an expert and the vote of a complete outsider. It’s like appraising a gemstone—you wouldn’t give a greengrocer’s appraisal the same weight you would