Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [71]
Good People
YAMA-SAN WORRIED about this hot temper and obstinacy of mine. So whenever I went to work for other directors he would call me to him and make me swear a solemn oath that I would in no circumstances lose my temper or behave stubbornly. In fact my experiences assisting other directors are extremely few: twice I worked for Takizawa Eisuke and once each for Fushimizu Shu and Naruse Mikio.
Among these experiences outside the Yamamoto group the thing that impressed me the most was Naruse’s work method. He possessed something that can only be called expertise. I assisted him on a lost film called Nadare (Avalanche, 1938), based on a story by Osaragi Jiro. I believe the material was not fully satisfactory to the director, but there was much that I was able to glean from this job.
Naruse’s method consists of building one very brief shot on top of another, but when you look at them all spliced together in the final film, they give the impression of a single long take. The flow is so magnificent that the splices are invisible. This flow of short shots that looks calm and ordinary at first glance then reveals itself to be like a deep river with a quiet surface disguising a fast-raging current underneath. The sureness of his hand in this was without comparison.
During the shooting Naruse was also sure. There was absolutely no waste in anything he did, and even the time for meals was duly allocated. My only complaint was that he did everything himself, leaving his assistant directors to sit around idle.
One day on the set I had nothing to do, as usual. So I went behind a backdrop that had clouds painted on it and found a huge velvet curtain that was used for backgrounds in night scenes. It was conveniently folded, so I lay down on it and promptly went to sleep. The next thing I knew, one of the assistant lighting technicians was prodding me awake. “Run!” he said. “Naruse’s mad.” In a panic I fled through a ventilation hole in the back of the stage. As I scrambled, I heard the lighting assistant yell, “He’s behind the clouds!” When I came nonchalantly through the front entrance to the stage, Naruse was coming out. “What’s wrong?” I asked, and he replied, “Somebody’s snoring on the stage. My day’s ruined, so I’m going home.” To my great shame, I was unable to admit that I had been the culprit. In fact, I didn’t bring myself to tell Naruse the truth until ten years had passed. He thought it was very funny.
As for Takizawa, I can’t forget the location in the Hakone Mountains where we shot Sengoku gunto den (The Saga of the Vagabonds, 1937). I was third assistant director on this picture, and I hadn’t learned to drink liquor yet. So when we got back to the inn at night, the maid would give me tea and my two sweet bean cakes, plus Takizawa’s and the chief assistant director’s rations of cakes as well. Every day I was eating six sweet bean cakes, so I guess I must have been pretty cute.
Seven years later, when I was location scouting in the same area for my first film, Sugata Sanshirō, I met the maid who had brought me those cakes every day. She failed to recognize me. Apparently in the course of seven years I had changed completely, at least to her eyes. How could the Kurosawa who wolfed down six bean cakes a day and the Kurosawa who now sat there drinking saké like a fish be the same person? I later noticed her staring at me through a slightly opened door, as if she were observing the movements of some kind of monster.