The drunken-doctor performance Shimura gave was a superb 90 percent, but because his adversary, Mifune, turned in 120 percent, I had to feel a little sorry for him.
I also feel bad about slighting Yamamoto Reizaburo, who has since passed away. He was playing the gang boss who gets out of jail and comes back to recover his woman and his territory from Mifune. I had never seen eyes as frightening as his, and when I first met him I was afraid to get close enough to carry on a conversation. When I finally did talk to him, though, I was surprised at what a fine human being he was.
On Drunken Angel I worked for the first time with composer Hayasaka Fumio. Following this collaboration, Hayasaka would do all of the music for my films up until the time of his death. He would also become one of my closest friends.
While I was working on this film, my father died. I received a telegram informing me he was failing quickly, but I was so pressured to get the picture done for the fixed release date that I couldn’t go to be at his side in Akita Prefecture.
The day I received the news of my father’s death I went out to Shinjuku alone. I tried drinking, but it only made me feel more depressed. Frustrated, I wandered out into the crowds of people in the streets of Shinjuku. I had no objective in mind. As I walked, I suddenly heard the strains of “The Cuckoo Waltz” blaring over a loudspeaker system somewhere. The cheerful brightness of the song threw my black mood into high relief, intensifying my sorrow to an intolerable degree. I hurried my steps to escape from this awful music.
In Drunken Angel there is a scene where Mifune, the yakuza, walks the length of the black-market street in a very grim mood because he has just learned that Yamamoto Reizaburo has come back to take over this territory he has been running. Shopkeepers’ insults confirm Mifune’s sudden loss of power, coupled with his knowledge that he has tuberculosis, and his feelings grow blacker and more desperate the farther he walks.
When I met with Hayasaka to discuss the dubbing of the sound for this sequence, I told him to try having “The Cuckoo Waltz” assail Mifune from a loudspeaker along the street. Hayasaka looked at me with some surprise, but then he immediately broke into a smile. “Ah, counterpoint,” he said. “Right,” I confirmed, “the Sharpshooter.” This expression “The Sharpshooter” was part of a private language Hayasaka and I developed. It referred to a Soviet film released in Japan under that title in which the counterpoint between sound and image was the most magnificent I have encountered. So “Sharpshooter” became an abbreviation for everything involved in the techniques used to achieve such cinematic effects. Hayasaka and I had already discussed the application of these techniques somewhere in Drunken Angel as a kind of experiment.
The day of the actual dubbing we performed our experiment. From a loudspeaker the sound of “The Cuckoo Waltz” flooded over the sorry figure of the gangster Mifune as he walked. Backed by this light music, the gangster’s dark thoughts leaped to the screen with amazing force. Hayasaka looked at me and smiled happily. As Mifune entered his usual little bar and closed the door behind him, the music simultaneously came to an end. Hayasaka turned to me in surprise. “Did you time your editing to the length of the tune?” he asked. I replied that I had not, and in fact I was more than a little surprised myself.
I had calculated a counterpoint effect from contrasting the images of this sequence with “The Cuckoo Waltz,” but I had not measured the actual length of either. I could not understand what had made their timing coincide. I wonder if it could have been that when I heard this music blaring at me after my father’s death in the course of experiencing feelings very similar to those of the gangster in my film, I unconsciously registered its exact length in my brain.
Subsequent to this “Cuckoo Waltz” incident, the same kind of thing happened to me many times. It seems that, no matter what is happening to me in my personal life, I am always thinking about my work without even knowing it. This phenomenon resembles some kind of karma. In fact, my having become a film director, and having persevered in this profession thus far, really must be either a reward or a punishment for something I did in a former life.
On the Banks of the River Sai
AT THE SAME TIME Drunken Angel was released in the movie theaters, April 1948, the Third Toho Dispute broke out. After completing my film I was at last able to go up to Akita and carry out the Buddhist memorial services for my father, but I was called back right away because of the Dispute. I returned only to be caught up in it.
When I look back on it now, this third strike has all the appearances of a children’s quarrel. It was like two siblings fighting over a doll, snatching it away from each other head by arm by leg until it’s in pieces. The two children in this struggle were the company and the union, and the doll was the studio.
The strike began with a company offensive in which a number of people lost their jobs. Management’s aim was to rid the employees’ union of its strong leftist element. In December of the preceding year those dealing with personnel matters at the top executive level had seen fit to make a notorious “Red-hater” president of the company. They had also put a strike-breaking specialist in charge of labor affairs, and no bones were made about the fact that union members with leftist tendencies were in danger of losing their jobs. It was true, however, that the leftist voice was the strongest one in the employees’ union at the studio, and in many areas the union was going too far, even demanding control of production by the workers.
But at the point when the management launched its punitive attack, the union and the film directors had already heard the criticisms on the sets where the films were being made, and they were well aware that the situation had gotten out of hand. They themselves were already imposing a better discipline, and the production of films was beginning to proceed smoothly again. Just at this sensitive Juneture the management came in with force. This was a tremendous blow to us. We were finally building a firm foundation for production again out of the desolation left in the wake of the Second Toho Dispute. We were infuriated. Nor can I believe that this course of action did the management any good. One incident was so foolish I still can’t forget it. We directors were trying to explain the situation to the new president of the company. He was listening, and it began to appear that we were arousing his sympathies. Just at that moment our attention was diverted to the huge plate-glass window of the room where we were meeting. Outside was a union demonstration, led by a big red flag. You might as well have waved a red-lined toreador’s cape in front of a raging bull. There wasn’t one more word we could say to our new Red-hating president. The third strike began, to last 195 days.
My personal experiences in this strike, from its unfortunate inception through to the end, were only bitter ones. Once again the studio employees’ union split. The defectors from the union proceeded to take up with those who had left as a result of the previous dispute and were now based at the rival company Shin [New] Toho. Through them Shin Toho increased its power yet further and began to plot the recapture of Toho’s studios. The Toho studio atmosphere became a repeat of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
In order to guard the studio against daily assaults from Shin Toho, the employees set up camp in the studio itself, and the place took on the air of a fort. With the objectivity of hindsight, all of this now looks like childish squabbles or a silly joke, but at the time it was a strategy planned with dead seriousness. First they strung up barbed-wire entanglements wherever you could get into the studio lot from outside. Then the lighting technicians set up their spots to prevent anyone sneaking in during the night. But the greatest work of genius was the fans: They set up two big wind machines just inside the front and back gates of the lot, facing outward like heavy artillery. In the event of a storming of the gates, they were ready with a huge amount of cayenne pepper to toss in front of the fan blasts and blind the oncoming enemy.
However, these battle preparations were made not just to repel attacks from Shin Toho. The strikers could see that behind the scenes the management itself was pul
ling all the strings, and it was not inconceivable that Toho itself might employ other means to end the strike. The strikers realized that the police might be called in to force them to go back to work, and the defenses were also rigged to guard against this. As laughable as it all seems today, the employees’ daily lives were dependent on the outcome of the strike. For us directors, too, who had received our education there, our studio stages and equipment were virtually part of us, and our attachment would not be broken easily. We, too, were ready to guard them with all our might.
The Shin Toho people were probably driven by the same kind of motivation to plot the recapture of the studio. But the opposition we felt toward them was a deep and powerful emotion. In the year and a half since they had left, our antagonism toward them had become all the stronger for the hardships we went through to rebuild the studio. When still others split off from us to join them, the gulf became all the more difficult to bridge. On top of all this, when it became clear that behind Shin Toho’s actions there were ringleaders whose plan was to aid our immediate enemy, the company management, the stand-off took on the characteristics of an irreparable breach, a chasm created by an earthquake.
For me the most painful moments of this strike were when I was caught between the employees of the Toho studio and the employees of Shin Toho. I became the target in the crossfire of “Let us in!” and “Keep them out.” But among the Shin Toho employees pushing to get into the studio were a few who tried to help me. Pushing and pulling their comrades back were former members of my crew. All of these grown men were crying.
At this sight I felt an irrepressible rage welling up inside me. Far from learning from experience with their blunders in the second strike, the management were heaping more errors on top of what they had done. They were tearing to shreds the cooperating work force of precious talent we had nurtured for so long.
We are still crying with the pain of these old wounds. But for the management there was nothing painful or even irritating about these experiences. They never recognized that movies are made by a cooperative work force that is created by a union of individual human talents. They never recognized how much effort was required to bring about that union. So they were able to destroy with total equanimity everything we had worked to build. We became like the children in Buddhist limbo who have preceded their parents in death: On the banks of the River Sai they pile up stones to form little towers. But every time a tower is completed, a mean devil comes and knocks it down. It was like Sisyphus trying to push his boulder up the mountain.
The company president and the director of labor relations at this time were both men from outside who had neither understanding of nor affection for movies. The executive in charge of labor, moreover, was willing to engage in the lowest imaginable tactics to win the strike battle. At one point he fed the newspapers a story to the effect that I had been forced by the union to put certain lines of dialogue into the script I was filming. Since this statement had no basis in truth, and if it had, I could never have lifted up my head in the world as a film director again, I demanded an explanation. The response was, “Well, if you say it isn’t so, then you must be right,” and he apologized on the spot. But even though he apologized, the article had been headline news, and everyone had read it. A printed correction would be in small type and consist of no more than two or three lines. All of this had been calculated in advance, so the apology was ready and nonchalant.
In his outrage over the underhandedness of this attitude, the film director Sekigawa Hideo pounded his fist on the labor-relations director’s office table to underscore his point. The glass tabletop cracked. The next day the newspapers carried stories about a company executive being subjected to violence at the hands of a film director during the course of the strike negotiations. Again we demanded an explanation of this false news release, and again the labor-relations director apologized without a moment’s hesitation.
Faced with this combination of a labor executive who was a genius of foul play and a president who lost all of his powers of reasoning at the sight of anything red, we felt badly burned. We raised a chorus of refusal ever to work with these two men in the future. Their response was the threatening statement, “The only thing that hasn’t come [to break the strike] is a battleship.” Indeed, there were armored police cars at the studio front gate, American tanks at the back and patrol planes flying overhead. Against these and the skirmish line surrounding the studio, our giant fans and cayenne pepper at the front and back gates were totally ineffectual. We had no alternative but to hand over the studio to the company management.
Several hours after our removal from the studio grounds, we received permission to re-enter. The only indication of change was a single signboard with a court order posted on it. Nothing appeared to be missing or altered, and yet we sensed that something was no longer there. What had vanished was the feeling of devotion we had once had toward the studio.
October 19, 1948, the Third Toho Strike came to an end. As autumn deepened, the dispute that had begun in the springtime was dissipated by the cold wind blowing through the studio. The emptiness we felt was neither sadness nor loneliness; it was like a shrug of the shoulders and a “See if I care.” I was determined to do as I had said, and not work with those two men again. I had come to understand that the studio I had thought was my home actually belonged to strangers. I went out of the gate with the intention never to return. I had had enough of piling up stones on the banks of the River Sai.
The Quiet Duel
THIS SAME YEAR of 1948, before the strike began, a new organization was formed with the name Film Art Association (Eiga Geijutsu Kyokai). The colleagues who established it were four film directors: Yamamoto Kajirō, Naruse Mikio, Taniguchi Senkichi and I. We were joined by producer Motoki Sojiro. The strike had started immediately after the formation of the organization, so it went into a dormant state at birth, but when the strike was over I found that this new group would be my work base following my departure from Toho.
My first job turned out to be the making of Shizuka naru ketto (The Quiet Duel) for the Daiei Company. Not only had the 195-day strike put my family’s kitchen accounts into terrible straits, but I was desperate to get back to filmmaking. Because of the screenwriting relationship I had established with Daiei back in my assistant-director days, this company was the first outside of Toho to offer me the chance to direct a film.
On the screenplay I had Taniguchi Senkichi’s collaboration, and for the lead I had Mifune Toshiro. Since his debut Mifune had been playing almost nothing but gangster roles, and I wanted to give him a chance to broaden his artistic horizons. Turning his type-cast image around, I conceived a role for him as an intellectual with sharp reasoning powers. Daiei expressed surprise over this role, and there were many in that company who were frankly worried about it. But Mifune turned in a magnificent performance as the young physician who refuses to marry the woman he loves for fear of infecting her with the virtually incurable syphilis he contracted from treating a diseased patient during the Pacific War. Even his posture and movements underwent a complete change, and he succeeded so well in conveying the anguish of this pathetic hero that I, too, was surprised.
A sad truth in the film business is that when an actor succeeds in a particular role there is a tendency to keep casting him in similar roles. This stems, of course, from the convenience and advantage of those who use him, but for the actor himself there is no greater misfortune. Repeating the same role over and over, like a machine-stamped image, is unbearable. An actor who is not constantly given new roles and new subjects to tackle dries out and withers like a tree you plant in the garden and then fail to water.
The most memorable part of filming The Quiet Duel was the shooting of the climax scene. The pain and bitterness the hero has kept hidden in his heart overwhelm him, and he reveals the secret of his rejection of his fiancée to the reformed streetwalker who works for him as a nurse. For that scene I was planning an uncut take unusually long for tha
t period of the cinema—over five minutes.
The night before the shooting neither Mifune nor the actress playing the nurse, Sengoku Noriko, was able to sleep. With something of the feeling of the night before a decisive battle, I, too, was sleepless.
The next day, as we prepared to roll the camera for the scene, a tense atmosphere enveloped the sound stage. To direct the action, I positioned myself between two lights, planting a foot on each base. Mifune’s and Sengoku’s performances revealed a do-or-die battle spirit. As the seconds ticked by, their acting reached a fever pitch of tension, and sparks seemed to fly as from a fireworks display. I could feel the perspiration forming in my clenched fists. Finally, when Mifune broke down in tears with the misery he was confessing, I heard the lights next to me begin to rattle.
I immediately realized it was I who was shaking. The shudders of emotion passing through my body were rattling the lights I stood on. “Damn,” I thought, “I should have sat on a chair,” but it was too late. Wrapping my arms around myself to try to control the shaking, I glanced toward the camera and nearly gasped. The cameraman, who was looking through the viewfinder and operating the camera, was crying like a baby. Every few seconds it seemed he couldn’t see through the viewfinder for the tears, and he would quickly wipe his eyes.
My heart began to pound. The photographer’s tears were clear evidence of the moving quality of Mifune’s and Sengoku’s acting, but if the camera work should become distorted because the actors succeeded in making the photographer cry, all would be for naught. My attention focused much more closely on the cameraman than on the actors’ performance. I have never before or since felt that any single take was as excruciatingly long as this one. When the tear-stained, contorted face of the photographer finally voiced an “O.K., cut” at the end of the scene, I was overcome with a tremendous sense of relief. While everyone on the set remained caught in the extreme tension of the scene, I felt like a man inebriated. Then I realized that I, the director, had forgotten to say, “O.K., cut.” I guess I was still young then.
Something Like an Autobiography Page 23