Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [105]
Faced with this combination of a labor executive who was a genius of foul play and a president who lost all of his powers of reasoning at the sight of anything red, we felt badly burned. We raised a chorus of refusal ever to work with these two men in the future. Their response was the threatening statement, “The only thing that hasn’t come [to break the strike] is a battleship.” Indeed, there were armored police cars at the studio front gate, American tanks at the back and patrol planes flying overhead. Against these and the skirmish line surrounding the studio, our giant fans and cayenne pepper at the front and back gates were totally ineffectual. We had no alternative but to hand over the studio to the company management.
Several hours after our removal from the studio grounds, we received permission to re-enter. The only indication of change was a single signboard with a court order posted on it. Nothing appeared to be missing or altered, and yet we sensed that something was no longer there. What had vanished was the feeling of devotion we had once had toward the studio.
October 19, 1948, the Third Toho Strike came to an end. As autumn deepened, the dispute that had begun in the springtime was dissipated by the cold wind blowing through the studio. The emptiness we felt was neither sadness nor loneliness; it was like a shrug of the shoulders and a “See if I care.” I was determined to do as I had said, and not work with those two men again. I had come to understand that the studio I had thought was my home actually belonged to strangers. I went out of the gate with the intention never to return. I had had enough of piling up stones on the banks of the River Sai.
The Quiet Duel
THIS SAME YEAR of 1948, before the strike began, a new organization was formed with the name Film Art Association (Eiga Geijutsu Kyokai). The colleagues who established it were four film directors: Yamamoto Kajirō, Naruse Mikio, Taniguchi Senkichi and I. We were joined by producer Motoki Sojiro. The strike had started immediately after the formation of the organization, so it went into a dormant state at birth, but when the strike was over I found that this new group would be my work base following my departure from Toho.
My first job turned out to be the making of Shizuka naru ketto (The Quiet Duel) for the Daiei Company. Not only had the 195-day strike put my family’s kitchen accounts into terrible straits, but I was desperate to get back to filmmaking. Because of the screenwriting relationship I had established with Daiei back in my assistant-director days, this company was the first outside of Toho to offer me the chance to direct a film.
On the screenplay I had Taniguchi Senkichi’s collaboration, and for the lead I had Mifune Toshiro. Since his debut Mifune had been playing almost nothing but gangster roles, and I wanted to give him a chance to broaden his artistic horizons. Turning his type-cast image around, I conceived a role for him as an intellectual with sharp reasoning powers. Daiei expressed surprise over this role, and there were many in that company who were frankly worried about it. But Mifune turned in a magnificent performance as the young physician who refuses to marry the woman he loves for fear of infecting her with the virtually incurable syphilis he contracted from treating a diseased patient during the Pacific War. Even his posture and movements underwent a complete change, and he succeeded so well in conveying the anguish of this pathetic hero that I, too, was surprised.
A sad truth in the film business is that when an actor succeeds in a particular role there is a tendency