Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [62]
The chief set designer, a difficult man named Inagaki who always took the side of the underdog, came by and gazed up at me. “What are you doing?” he asked. “What am I doing? The day the forty-seven loyal retainers carried out their vendetta, there was a huge snowfall. If we don’t have snow, we can’t work,” I replied, continuing to pile salt on the roof. Inagaki kept looking up at me for a long time, and then he went back to the prop room mumbling to himself. He returned leading a whole mob of set workers. “Snow! Give me some snow here!” he bellowed angrily.
I came down off the roof and went to the Yamamoto group’s waiting room, where I found Yama-san asleep in a lounge chair and woke him up. “The rear gate is almost covered with snow now. Please start shooting from there. While you do that, I’ll finish getting the snow on the front gate and start shooting the scene on that side. Then you can take over in front when you finish in the back, and I’ll get the garden snowed in and start shooting there, and then you can …” Yama-san rubbed his eyes and nodded sleepily. He got up slowly with all his exhaustion showing.
It was a brilliantly sunny, blue-sky day. We used a red filter to shoot the attack on Lord Kira’s mansion day-for-night, and the pitch-black sky came out in magnificent contrast to the white snow. But as we got to the garden scenes, real night closed in on us, and we finished shooting in the middle of the night. As we cranked up at the end of it all, the studio head arrived on the scene while we were having our picture taken to commemorate the event. He said he hadn’t been able to put together anything much, but would we all please come to the dining hall for a toast.
Arriving at the dining hall, we found the tables all decked out with saké and fish. We got to our seats facing the line-up of company executives in the seats of honor, but in our extreme fatigue none of the crew felt like making a toast. We couldn’t swallow anything. All we wanted to do was get to sleep. While the executives made speeches of thanks for meeting the production schedule, everyone listened with drooping heads as if they were at a wake. The moment the speeches were over, the lighting technicians all stood up, bowed and walked out without saying a word. Then the camera crew, the sound re-cordists and every other section of the crew followed suit, without a word. In a few minutes only the executives, Yama-san and the assistant directors were left. This must have made some impression on the executives; it certainly did on me.
Yama-san never got angry. Even if he was furious, he never showed it. Because he didn’t, I took over and made people understand that he was angry. Many of the stars who had been hired away from other studios were very self-centered and pampered, and they showed up late on the set. If this went on for a number of days, Yama-san wouldn’t get angry, but the crew got mad enough to spit. When this happened, the work itself would go bad, so something had to be done.
On these occasions Yama-san called the whole crew together and explained what was going to happen. When the star arrived on the set late again, Yama-san would thunder out, “That’s it! Wrap up for today!” And everyone would leave. The star and his attendant would