Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [84]
At the same time the cast entered the factory women’s dormitory, the crew and I moved into a men’s dormitory. Our mornings began every day with the distant strains of the fifes and drums. When we heard this music, we leaped out of our beds, pulled on our clothes and rushed off to the Hiratsuka railroad crossing. Along the white frost-covered road came the fife-and-drum corps, all wearing headbands and playing a simple but inspiring march tune. While playing their instruments, they glared at us out of the corners of their eyes as they passed by us, crossed the railroad tracks and marched into the front gate of the Nippon Kogaku factory. We would watch them disappear and then return to our dormitory for breakfast. After our meal we gathered our equipment and proceeded to the factory for filming.
The spirit with which we shot was exactly the same as if we had been making a pure documentary film. The girls in each section of the factory of course spoke the lines of the drama that were set down in the script, but rather than paying attention to the camera they were totally absorbed in carrying out the factory job they were learning and in monitoring the workings of the machinery. In their concentrated expressions and movements there was almost no trace of the self-consciousness actors have, only the vitality and beauty of people at work.
The full impact of this quality comes through best in the sequence I edited together of many, many closeups of each girl at her place in the factory. As background music for these closeups I used the inspiring sound of the battle drum from the John Philip Sousa march “Semper Fidelis,” which lent them the courage and heroism of soldiers in the front lines fighting the war. (Oddly enough, even though I used march music by an American composer, the censors from the Ministry of the Interior sat through this sequence without labeling it “British-American.”)
The food at the factory was awful. It usually consisted of broken rice mixed with corn or millet, or broken rice mixed with some other weedy grain. The main dish was always some kind of seaweed or kelp that had been culled from the nearby shore. We on the crew felt sorry for the actresses, who had to eat this miserable fare and then work more than an eight-hour day. We each contributed from our own pockets every day and had someone go out and buy sweet potatoes. We steamed them in the kettle-style dormitory bathtub, which was heated with a wood fire, and gave them to the girls.
Later it came to pass that I married the girl who played the leader of the girls’ volunteer corps, Yaguchi Yoko. At that time she represented the actresses and frequently came to argue with me on their behalf. She was a terribly stubborn and uncompromising person, and since I am very much the same, we often clashed head on. These battles could only be brought to a peaceful resolution through the intervention of Irie Takako, who had no easy task of it.
In any event, The Most Beautiful was a film that occasioned a very special kind of hardship. Much more than for me or for my crew, it affected the young actresses, who would never see the likes of it again. I don’t know if it was due to the stress of acting in this film, but for some reason almost all of them gave up their careers and got married when The Most Beautiful was over. Since among these women there were many who had great acting talent and of whom I had hopes for the future, I didn’t know whether I should rejoice or lament. And I certainly didn’t want