Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [70]
Near the end of Yama-san’s Horses is a scene where the foal is sold at a horse auction. The young heroine, Ine (Takamine Hideko), has to buy a big bottle of saké at one of the shops set up for the auction. She carries the bottle through the rowdy throng gathered for the auction, returning to where her family is gathered to commemorate the parting with their horse. The sound of the northern folk songs sung by the farmers standing around their horses while they drink, like the members of her own family, comes to Ine’s ears. Because it symbolizes her separation from the horse she has raised herself, it makes her unbearably sad.
The original idea for Horses had come from Yama-san. Listening to the radio, he happened to tune in to the live broadcast of a horse auction. Amid all the sounds of the sales he could hear the sobs of a young girl. This girl became his heroine, Ine. So this scene at the auction is the real core of the film.
To our dismay, an order came from the Army’s Equestrian Affairs Administration to cut the entire scene. It was wartime (Horses was released in 1941), and what we were showing was in contravention of the ban on daytime alcohol consumption. Yet this scene had been in the approved original script. A colonel assigned by the Equestrian Affairs Administration had even been present at the shooting (Colonel Mabuchi, a stubborn, implacable character with a brusque manner). The filming had been extremely difficult—we had had to dolly on a diagonal through the square where an actual auction was being held. It was no easy matter to win the cooperation of the crowd gathered for the auction, and here and there throughout the square we had to contend with mud and puddles of water. It was a matter of precision balancing to move the camera along dolly tracks laid over boards through this mess. But everything went miraculously well and we got a superb take. So what did they mean by telling us to cut it now?
I made up my mind not to give in. The Army bureaucracy at that time was so strict they wouldn’t let babies cry, and on top of that I was pitted directly against Colonel Mabuchi. The prospects looked very dim. Yama-san and the producer, Morita Nobuyoshi, were both leaning toward the inevitability of cutting the scene, but I had been given full responsibility for the editing, and I refused to budge.
To begin with, the idea of banning daytime alcohol consumption struck me as the stupidest kind of hard-line officiousness. Secondly, they might have apologized for letting us film it all and asked us politely to cut it. Instead, they just issued an order: “Cut it.” I couldn’t let them get away with that.
One evening very late, as the release date drew dangerously near, Morita came to find me in the editing room. As soon as I saw his face, I said, “I won’t cut it.” “I know,” he replied in a casual tone, “I know when you have that expression on your face nothing anyone says will make any difference. But we can’t leave things like this. I want you to come with me to Colonel Mabuchi’s house.” “What will we do there?” “I just want it made clear whether we cut or don’t cut.” I responded, “But you know the Colonel will say ‘cut’ and I’ll say ‘I won’t cut,’ so all we’ll do is sit and glare at each other.” “Well, if that’s what happens, there’s nothing we can do about it. I still want you to come.”
Just as I predicted, all Colonel Mabuchi and I did was sit and glare menacingly at each other. On our arrival Morita had said, “Kurosawa here says he won’t cut that scene under any circumstances. He’s the kind of fellow who won’t do something that doesn’t make sense. I leave him to you.” Then he looked down and proceeded to drink the saké that the Colonel’s wife had served us. He said nothing more. I, too, once I had said my piece to the Colonel, fell silent and stared at my cup as I drank. The Colonel’s wife came back from time to time, served more saké and looked at the three of us worriedly.
I don’t know how long this silence went