Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [57]
A few months later I received notification of the second round of testing. I was told to appear at the P.C.L. studios on a certain day at a certain time. Feeling as if I had been bewitched by a fox to have written that kind of essay and have it accepted, I proceeded as ordered to the P.C.L. studio.
I had once seen a photograph of the P.C.L. studios in a film magazine. It showed a white building with palm trees in front of it, so I had thought it must be located along the beach in Chiba Prefecture, many miles from Tokyo. It turned out to be in a southwestern suburb of the city, a very prosaic place. How little I knew of the realities of the Japanese film industry, and how little I dreamed of ever working in it! But I found my way to the P.C.L. studios, and there I met the best teacher of my entire life, “Yama-san”—the film director Yamamoto Kajirō.
A Mountain Pass
AS I WRITE this, I can’t help thinking how very strange it all was. It was chance that led me to walk along the road to P.C.L. and, in so doing, the road to becoming a film director, yet somehow everything that I had done prior to that seemed to point to it as an inevitability. I had dabbled eagerly in painting, literature, theater, music and other arts and stuffed my head full of all the things that come together in the art of the film. Yet I had never noticed that cinema was the one field where I would be required to make use of all I had learned. I can’t help wondering what fate had prepared me so well for this road I was to take in life. All I can say is that the preparation was totally unconscious on my part.
The inner courtyard of P.C.L. was overflowing with people. Later I heard that more than five hundred people had responded to the newspaper announcement for the job of assistant director. Apparently the company had rejected about two thirds of the applicants on the basis of their essays, but more than 130 people assembled in the courtyard for the second round. I knew that out of all these only five people would actually be hired. I no longer felt like taking the second test.
But by this time I had developed a real curiosity about seeing a studio. I busied myself with looking around. Apparently no films were being made at the moment, and no one who looked like an actor was anywhere in sight. But one fellow among the assistant-director applicants was wearing a morning coat. It’s odd that I should recall this, but every so often I remember this fellow in his tails for a job examination, and I shake my head in wonder.
The first part of our examination consisted of scenario writing. We were to be divided into groups and given a theme to write on. Each group was given a subject, but each applicant had to write alone. Afterward we would have an oral examination. My group was assigned a page-three newspaper item about the crime of an industrial laborer from Kotochi Ward who fell in love with a dancer from Asakusa. I had no idea how to write a scenario and I was sitting there nonplused when I stole a glance to one side. The fellow next to me was scribbling away at a furious rate as if totally accustomed to it. I really had no intention of cheating, but I couldn’t help watching him. It seemed that first you decide where the story is to take place and then go about writing it. I took note of this and proceeded to write. As an aspiring painter, I decided to draw a contrast between the bleak industrial area and the gaudy dressing room of a revue backstage, showing the laborer’s life-style in black and the dancer’s in pink. That’s how I started my story, but I don’t remember the rest of it.
After submitting my finished scenario I had to wait a long time for my oral examination. Noon had passed while I was writing, and since I had eaten only my usual breakfast before coming to the exam, I was ravenous. There was a cafeteria in the studio, but I didn’t know if we were allowed to eat there, so I asked the fellow next to me. He turned out to be quite