Akira Kurosawa

Although as with anyone, the life of Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) went beyond the movies, or rather, let’s say that the movies were nourished by his vital experience. Without going any further, his fondness for alcohol helped him inThe Drunken Angel . Akira was born in Omori, in the province of Tokyo. And he was stimulated to write his ‘almost autobiography’ by the example of Jean Renoir and the non-example of John Ford . He warned that for those who came to his cinema, knowing about him helped to understand him.

Kurosawa dedicated a good part of his memories to remembering his childhood: his delay in school, his ‘crying child’ stage. This circumstance brought him together with a partner, Keinosuke Uesuka, a crybaby who, like him, would end up dedicating himself to the cinema. Very close to his older brother, his suicide at the age of 27 marked him. Precisely he instilled in her a love of cinema, through his work as a narrator of silent films. Among the films that Akira saw between 1919 and 1929, about a hundred, there are works by Chaplin, Ford, Sternberg, Von Stroheim, Lubitsch, DeMille, Sjostrom, Lang, Wiene, Walsh, Dreyer, Pabst, Buñuel, Borzage, Renoir… Foreign cinema interests him more than national one.

In 1935 he responded to an advertisement for the PCL film studios, which were looking for assistant directors. He sees it as a coincidence, and something more: “I had dedicated myself to painting, literature, theater, music and other arts, and I had broken my head with all those subjects that, after all, brings together the art of cinema.” He will always keep fond memories of the teachers who helped him, whom he honors in his latest film,Madadayo . Among the filmmakers he mentions Kajiro Yamamoto, whom he affectionately called Yama-san, as a great teacher. With him he learned to call people by their names, including the extras. Other teachers included Nobuyoshi Morita, Yasujiro Shimazu, Sadao Yamanaka , Kenji Mizoguchi , Yasujiro Ozu , and Mikio Naruse . He said: “When I think of all of them I would like to raise my voice and sing that song: ‘…we give thanks for the kindness of our teacher, whom we honor and respect…’”

Akira was the son of a military man, and took classes in kendo (fighting with bamboo poles) and fencing. Stubborn and hot-tempered, he liked the military world, of warriors, horseback riding and battles, which he reflected in his films. Disciplined as a filmmaker, he gave some advice, which he applied himself, for ‘those who don’t have time’: “You may only write one page a day, but if you do it every day, at the end of a year you find that you have 365 pages of script.” His filmography is exciting. He drank from Western sources, and he himself would influence beyond the borders of Japan. Shakespeare ( Throne of Blood, Ran ), Dostoevsky (The idiot ) on the one hand, and the films revisited in the West (The seven samurai andThe Magnificent Seven ,Yojimbo andFor a fistful of dollarsThe hidden fortress andStar Wars ) on the other. The boom outside of Japan gave it to himRashomon , Golden Lion in Venice. When low hours came (his bad experience of him with Tora! Tora! Tora! ), some western admirers lend him a hand: Lucas and Coppola withKagemusha, the shadow of the warrior , Spielberg withThe dreams of Akira Kurosawa , the Russians with Derzu Uzala . Although he played many keys (film noir inThe hell of hate andThe scoundrels sleep in peace , or his continuous revisiting of the world of the samurai), perhaps one of his most overflowing titles in humanity waslive . The journey of the nondescript civil servant whose life turns upside down when he is diagnosed with cancer (he will finally do something useful, listen to the request to promote a children’s playground) confirms the humanism of a great filmmaker.