Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [107]
Everywhere at that time, at every shoot for every studio, no matter how much the atmosphere of one studio differed from the next, the people working on the set were all inveterate movie lovers. So for me, working with a Daiei crew for the first time presented no discomfort whatsoever, and the filming proceeded smoothly throughout. But, looking at my Daiei crew, I couldn’t help worrying about my Toho crew who had lost their jobs in the strike.
A Salmon’s Old Stories
LIKE A SALMON, I can’t forget the place where I was born. I left Toho at the age of thirty-nine and spent the next three years moving from Daiei to Shin Toho to Shochiku. But at forty-two I returned to Toho and ever since have been going in and out of that studio where I began.
No matter where I am, the place where I received my training remains in a corner of my heart, and in everything I do I can’t help thinking about the currents of the river called Toho studios. What I think about the most, to this very day, are the assistant directors who lost their jobs in the strike. They were men with great potential, but because the strike so closely resembled warfare, their names were put down on the list of personnel cuts and they were scattered to the winds. The Japanese film world undoubtedly lost several great directors.
In later years when I returned to Toho and prepared to start filming there again, one of the executives came to see me. He lamented the fact that “Today’s assistant directors don’t have the ambition that A.D.’s in the old days did.” I replied, “You were the ones who threw the old A.D.’s out,” and he looked at me with a doleful expression and said, “I wonder if they would have mended their ways.” My voice rose uncontrollably. “You must be joking. You’re the ones who should mend your ways.”
It was actually at that point, with the firing of those young assistant directors, that the Japanese film industry began its decline. If young people are not trained and fed in to replenish the reservoir of high spirits, the natural aging process inevitably leads to a loss of strength. This is true in any enterprise. I don’t know if the older people stayed on in the movie industry because young people weren’t trained, or if young people weren’t trained because the older ones were staying on. In any event, no one took the responsibility for training young people.
Not only has this training been neglected, but the movie industry in Japan shows no inclination to introduce new filmmaking technology. Today everyone talks about the twilight of motion pictures as if it were a worldwide phenomenon. Why, then, are American movies entering a new age of prosperity?
The backbone of American film is the organization called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is built on the fundamental recognition of the fact that the art of motion pictures is intimately bound up with science.
In order to do battle with the new entertainment power of television, motion pictures must employ arms that will ensure a victory. I don’t believe that the movie industry can hope to maintain its special appeal in the face of television technology unless it modernizes its old equipment. Television and motion pictures may look very much alike, but they are basically different. Those who see television as the enemy of the motion-picture industry are merely suffering from a superficial understanding of movies. The film industry has been the hare, caught napping, while the television tortoise walked on by.
Worse yet, in Japan the industry has begun imitating television, producing films that are like television movies. Few people are eccentric enough to enjoy paying a high ticket price to go to see a television movie in a movie theater.
I have digressed again, but it is difficult for a film director who is like a salmon. When the river he was born and raised in becomes polluted, he can’t climb back upstream to lay his eggs—he has trouble making his films. He ends up by complaining.
One such salmon, seeing no other way, made a long journey to climb