Filmmakers photographed by Xavier Lambours.
Once into production, work on Ran progressed so smoothly that even Mr. Kurosawa was surprised. In the summer of 1984, just when he was preparing to shoot the great storm scene in which Hidetora (his Lear) rushes deranged into the wilderness, a typhoon struck the shooting location in Kyushu perfectly on schedule. Later Mr. Kurosawa joked, “In Japan, journalists often call me ‘Emperor’ because they think I’m so tyrannical. Well, I guess I can now command even the elements!”
[ Kurosawa Directs a Cinematic Lear | Peter Grilli — 1985 ]
After Kagemusha won the [Palme d’Or at the 1980] Cannes International Film Festival, until 1982, Kurosawa traveled extensively in Europe and the United States, meeting filmmakers everywhere he went and being warmly welcomed. While he was staying in New York’s Plaza Hotel, he received many surprise visitors, including film greats Jean-Luc Godard, John Milius, Werner Herzog, and Martin Scorsese.
The combination of Godard and Kurosawa was unusual. Probably he was invited along by Milius and went out of curiosity. Producer Tom Luddy might have come with them as well.
We had heard that Milius was a Kurosawa fan, and Kurosawa also had good things to say about his The Wind and the Lion. Milius asked Kurosawa to teach him the martial art of kendo, or Japanese fencing, and did Mifune impersonations, but Godard only sat looking on, smiling, and never spoke to Kurosawa.
Another unusual visitor was the German director Werner Herzog, whose name was then unfamiliar to Kurosawa. There was a book he wanted to give Kurosawa, said Herzog, but he hadn’t been able to find it in the book store and he had a plane to catch, so he had just dropped by to pay his respects. Then the next day, I think it was, he made a special trip to hand-deliver the book—having gone to the trouble of altering his flight reservations to do so. I believe it was a book of drawings. In any case, Kurosawa found this gesture deeply moving.
Later, in Japan, Kurosawa took the first opportunity to go see Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and was overwhelmed by its tenacious energy.
— Teruyo Nogami, Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa
“The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express. He put forth everything directly and boldly, and his sense of timing was the keenest I had ever seen in a Japanese actor. And yet with all of his quickness he also had surprisingly fine sensibilities. […] I’m a person who is rarely impressed by actors, but in the case of Mifune I was completely overwhelmed.” — Akira Kurosawa
“He is an artist, and he is demanding; a man more full, more whole, both more self-willed and more compassionate than most men are. It is from this understanding, this tact with life, that he draws his films, just as he draws from us, his actors, our best. I know. I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.” — Toshiro Mifune
“Toward the end, when Mifune was in the hospital, I called one day at Kurosawa’s house. Kurosawa came into the parlor in his wheelchair. I had gotten word of Mifune’s condition, and when I reported this, Kurosawa said in a tone of nostalgia: ‘If I ever see Mifune again, I want to tell him what a good job he did. I want to praise him.’ How Mifune must have yearned to hear those words. But without his ever having had that chance, on Christmas Eve, 1997, at the age of seventy-seven, the turbulent life of Toshiro Mifune came to an end. Nine months later, on September 6, 1998, the death of the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was reported around the world, marking the end of an era. He was eighty-eight years old.” — Teruyo Nogami
March 25, 1943 — Akira Kurosawa’s first film, Sanshiro Sugata, is released in Japan.
People often ask me how I felt directing my maiden work, but, as I have said, I simply enjoyed it. I went to sleep each night looking forward eagerly to the next day’s shooting, and there was absolutely nothing painful about the experience. My crew to a man gave me their utmost. My set designers and wardrobe people ignored the small size of our budget and responded with, ‘O.K. Leave it to us!’ I was deeply touched by their insistence on making everything exactly what I wanted it to be. And all the doubts I had had about my ability to direct before I was give the opportunity vanished after the first shot was completed, like clouds and mist after a rain. The whole task was carried out with a feeling of ease.
This feeling may be a little hard to understand, so let me try to explain. When I was an assistant director, I watched very carefully how Yama-san (Kajiro Yamamoto) directed, and I couldn’t help but be amazed at the way his attention reached every nook and cranny of the production. Feeling that my own eyes could not see that far, I necessarily harbored doubts about my directing talent.
Once I looked at the production from the director’s viewpoint, however, I saw everything I had been unable to see as an assistant director, or even as a second-unit director. I understood the subtle difference between positions. When you are creating your own work, it is entirely different from when you are helping with someone else’s. Moreover, when you are directing your own script, you understand the script better than anyone else possibly can. When I finally became a director, I at last understood all the implications of Yama-san’s order to write scripts first if I wanted to direct. It was because of this that, although Sanshiro Sugata was my very first film, it went exactly the way I wanted it to. Making this film seemed not like ascending a steep precipice, but more like clambering around the gentle slopes at the base of the mountain. My overall impression of it was that of a very pleasant excursion, like a picnic.
— Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography
“I have never taken on a project offered to me by a producer or a production company. My films emerge from my own desire to say a particular thing at a particular time. The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.”
“I am often asked if there is anything special I do to make my films understood by foreigners. I reply that I am making my films as a Japanese as honestly as I can. So these films are understood by other people and sometimes are loved by them. It seems that everyone becomes closer to everyone else through cinema.” — Akira Kurosawa
“My way of creating, my style if you want to call it that, is something I was born with: it comes naturally. For that reason, it’s not something I’m overly aware of while I’m doing it. I don’t force any picture of mine to be a Kurosawa film. I just tell the actors to be honest with themselves and true to their feelings, not to think about unnecessary things, and to let their actions flow naturally. This is my philosophy of film art, and it’s an aesthetic principle that I hold dear—it comes from the heart. I am simply a maker of films.”
Akira Kurosawa
March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998
“Each one [of the films I’ve made with Kurosawa] is something very like a revelation to me—not only about him, but about myself as well. Talking about actors’ realizing themselves, when I am with Kurosawa… I realize myself best. And yet he never dictates. Rather, he allows you to do your best, and for him you do it.”
Takashi Shimura
March 12, 1905 – February 11, 1982
