Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [85]
In later years when I asked the ones who quit what their reasons were, they all denied that my demands on them had had anything to do with it. In fact, they said that working on my film had been their first opportunity to return to being ordinary women, following the same path ordinary women do, casting off the various dead layers of skin that had clung to them as actresses. But in their protestations I heard much that was meant to keep my feelings from being hurt. The truth of the matter is, I am sure, that the severity of the work I put them through was one of the primary causes of their decision to give up acting.
But they really did their best for me, this group of actresses. The Most Beautiful is not a major picture, but it is the one dearest to me.
Sugata Sanshirō, Part II
Sugata Sanshirō had been a hit, so the studio asked me to make a sequel. This is one of the bad points about commercialism: It seems the entertainment sections of Japan’s film-production companies haven’t heard the proverb about the fish under the willow tree that hangs over the stream—the fact that you hooked one there once doesn’t mean you always will. These people continually remake films that were successful in the past. They don’t attempt to dream new dreams; they only want to repeat the old ones. Even though it has been proved that a remake never outdoes the original, they persist in their foolishness. I would call it foolishness of the first order. A director filming a remake does so with great deference toward the original work, so it’s like cooking up something strange out of leftovers, and the audience who have to eat this concoction are in an unenviable position, too.
Sugata Sanshirō, Part II was not a remake, so the situation could have been worse, but it was still a question of refrying to a certain extent. I had to force myself to arouse the desire to go back to it and continue it. But one aspect of the story of Higaki Gennosuke’s younger brothers seeking a revenge battle with Sanshirō interested me. This was the fact that Gennosuke is forced to see himself as he was in his younger days through the similarly impetuous actions of his younger brother Tesshin, and the recollection causes him to suffer.
The climax of the Sanshirō sequel is a duel between Tesshin and Sanshirō on a snow-covered mountain. The location was a place called Hoppo, a hot-spring and ski resort, and two funny things occurred during our shooting. On the day I was helping the set builders construct the hut the brothers are living in, my gloves got covered with sticky snow and I had to melt it off over a bonfire. Then when evening came, the temperature fell suddenly and I lost all sensation in my wet and stiffened hands. I went back with the rest to the hot-spring inn.
My intention was to go straight to the bath pool, jump in and get warmed up. But the water was so hot I couldn’t stand it, so I scurried to add cold water to it. I picked up a tub of cold water, but as I did so I slipped on the icy floor of the bathroom, and the bucket flew up in the air and emptied the cold water over my head. I have never been so cold in my life. In fact, compared to Yama-san’s short story about heat, this experience of mine rivals it for cold.
As I struggled along, stark naked, shaking like a leaf, trying desperately to mix cold water into the bath, my crew started to come into the bath. I yelled at them with violently chattering teeth to give me a hand. When they saw how cold I was, they dipped up buckets of hot water from the bath, added a little cold water to these and poured them over my head. With this I came back to life and wondered why I hadn’t thought of doing that myself. When the human animal gets panicky, he becomes stupid.
The second funny thing that happened at the Hoppo location involved Higaki Gennosuke’s youngest brother, Genzaburo. He is meant to be half crazy, so I spent a great deal of effort on his costume and makeup. We put him in a tousled long black wig like those used