Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [98]
Exactly what sort of people are they? What is the code of obligation that supports their organization? What is the individual psychological make-up of the gang members, and what is the violence of which they are so proud?
To investigate these questions, I decided to set my film in a black-market district and make the hero a gangster who has charge of that particular territory. In order to bring his personality into high relief, I decided to pit another character against him. At first I thought I would make this antagonist a young humanist doctor who was just setting up his practice in the area. But no matter how hard Uekusa and I worked at it, we couldn’t bring this idealized doctor to life—he was so perfect that he had no vitality. The gangster figure, on the other hand, had become almost real enough to breathe; his every move reeked of flesh and blood. This immediacy arose from the fact that he was based on a real-life model, whom Uekusa was meeting with regularly. Uekusa was, in fact, becoming so immersed in the gangsters’ way of life, so absorbed in and sympathetic toward the underworld, that he and I later quarreled over it.
As background to the characterizations, we decided to create an unsightly drainage pond where people threw their garbage. It became the symbol of the disease that was eating away at the whole neighborhood, and it grew clearer day by day in our minds. We despaired all the more that our second protagonist, the young physician setting up his practice, remained a lifeless marionette and refused to move of his own accord. Every day Uekusa and I sat glaring at each other, surrounded by piles of crumpled and torn paper with scribbles on it. I was beginning to think we would never find a way out; I was even thinking of scrapping the whole project.
But at some point in the writing of every script I feel like giving the whole thing up. From my many experiences of writing screenplays, however, I have learned something: If I hold fast in the face of this blankness and despair, adopting the tactic of Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect, who glared at the wall that stood in his way until his legs became useless, a path will open up.
On this occasion, too, I made up my mind to endure it. Day after day I sat glaring in my mind’s eye at the puppet-like image of the doctor who refused to grow into a real character. After about five days Uekusa and I had a sudden revelation at just about the same moment. We both remembered a certain doctor. Before we had begun writing we had “script-scouted” as many black-market areas as we could find. In a slum in the port city of Yokohama we had come across an alcoholic doctor. This man fascinated us with his arrogant manner, and we took him with us to three or four bars to listen to his stories while we drank. It seems he operated without a physician’s license, and his patients were the streetwalkers of the slums. His talk about his illegal gynecology practice was so vulgar it nearly made us sick, but every so often he said something bitterly sarcastic about human nature that gleamed with aptness. He also interspersed his talk with peals of loud laughter, and in that raucous wide-open mouth there was a strange feeling of raw humanity. He was probably a rebellious young man ending his days in cynicism, but Uekusa and I remembered, looked at each other and simultaneously felt, “This is it!” Once we had recalled this alcoholic doctor, it seemed altogether strange to us that we hadn’t thought of him sooner.
The marionette-like young doctor who was the picture of humanitarianism was blown to bits. At last the “Drunken Angel” came on stage. The character immediately took on life and breath