Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [72]
The original idea for The Saga of the Vagabonds came from the film director Yamanaka Sadao. The screenplay was written by Miyoshi Juro, a playwright, but here and there Yamanaka’s brilliance shone through it. (I later wrote my own script based on Yamanaka’s original, and this was filmed by Sugie Toshio in 1960.) We were on location in the Hakone Mountains at the coldest time of the year, in February. A bitter wind blew across these plains at the foot of a pure-white Mount Fuji all day long, and our hands and faces became cracked and wrinkled like silk crepe. We left for the location while it was still dark outside, and when we arrived there the sun was just beginning to strike the summit of the mountain, turning it a rosy pink. I’ll never forget the landscape I gazed at every day on the way to the location before starting the shooting, again during break periods and yet again on the way back to the inn. It’s disrespectful of me to say this about Takizawa, but the landscape impressed me far more deeply than what we were filming.
In the morning as we rode along in our car in the wan light of predawn, we could see the old farmhouses on both sides of the road. Farmers dressed as extras, wearing their hair in topknots, clad in armor and carrying swords, would emerge from these houses, throw open the huge doors and lead out their horses. It was as if we had really been transported back into the sixteenth century. They would mount and ride along behind our car. Rolling along past massive cryptomeria and pine trees, I felt that these, too, were part of that ancient era.
When we arrived at the location, the extras led their horses off into the forest and tethered them to trees while they built a huge bonfire. The farmers gathered around the fire, and in the dim forest their armor caught gleams of light from the roaring red fire. It made me feel that I had stumbled on a band of mountain samurai in the woods.
While they waited for shooting to begin, the people and horses all stood still with their backs to the north wind. The standing warriors would shudder in a wave, their topknots rising on end along with their horses’ manes and tails. And clouds skittered across the sky. The scene portrayed exactly the feeling conveyed in the mountain-samurai title song from the movie.
Thinking of home so far away,
Ah, lay down your lance in the forest.
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE LEFT:
As a baby, with his nurse; mounted on his rocking-horse; at age 5 (seated) with his brother Heigo, and their niece, Mikiko; and wearing his favorite hat, at age 3 with Heigo.
On graduation from Keika Middle School in 1927.
AK at the time he first went to work at the P.C.L. studios in 1935.
AK with Yama-san—Yamamoto Kajirō, his mentor as film director.
AK as assistant director to Naruse Mikio (right) on Avalanche (1937).
Commemorative photo of cast and crew taken at the end of shooting Chushingura in 1939. Director Yamamoto Kajirō is third from right in the back row; AK is in the center of the second row wearing a cloth cap, dark scarf, and light jacket. Note salt “snow” on the ground.
Cast and crew at completion of Takizawa Eisuke’s Chinetsu (Subterranean Heat, 1938). AK is seated third from left in the front row.
AK (right) directing Okochi Denjiro and Fujita Susumu in The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945).
AK (in middle distance, wearing light hat) directs students in front of Kyoto University’s front gate during the shooting of No Regrets for Our Youth (1946).
AK during the same filming.
With the stars of One Wonderful Sunday (1947), Nakakita Chieko and Numasaki Isao.
Directing One Wonderful Sunday.
AK (behind camera) watches closely as Mifune Toshiro throttles Shimura Takashi during the filming of Drunken Angel (1948).
AK about 1951 (Photo: Francis Haar)
At a hot-spring inn while writing a script, about 1950.
Ever since The Saga of the Vagabonds I have felt an affinity for the town of Gotenba, the plains at the base of Mount Fuji and the people and horses of the area, and I have made several period