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How the Kremlin Saved Kurosawa Japanese film maestro Akira Kurosawa was at his lowest point – and then the Soviets stepped in. Video by Noah Oskow. Our main site: www.unseenjapan.com Follo… An audio-visual version of this post is available on our YouTube channel.

「日本の首相の名前を知らなくても、黒澤さんの名前を知らないロシア人はほとんどいないと思います。」 They may not know the name of the Japanese prime minister, but I doubt there are many Russians who do not know the name “Kurosawa.”

Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasiliev, co-director of Dersu Uzlala

It goes without saying that Akira Kurosawa is one of the most famous and well-regarded filmmakers of the past seventy years. Despite having passed away two decades ago, he may well still be considered one of the most famous Japanese citizens on the world stage.

Of course, even a great creator doesn’t just influence others - they first need to receive inspiration themselves. For Kurosawa, often considered the most “westernized” of Japan’s great directors, one might point to Shakespeare, on whose works the director based some of his most famous films.

But while Kurosawa did love and respect the Bard, his western literary influence did not end with the Anglosphere. From a young age, Kurosawa obsessed over the works of the Russian literary giants - Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and many others.

Inspiration and Tragedy

Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, an early influence on Akira Kurosawa.

Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo in 1910, the youngest of eight children, to Isamu Kurosawa and his wife Shima.

Akira gained a love of narrative from an early age thanks to his father’s interest in films, but was perhaps just as influenced by his older brother, Heigo. Four years Akira’s senior, Heigo was a source of great admiration for his younger brother, and was by his brother’s admission “addicted to Russian literature.” Heigo and his sisters would lend Akira their books, which the young boy would read vociferously on the walk to and from school.

Akira first wanted to become a painter, and ended up living with his beloved brother Heigo when that chosen career (and later work on an illegal underground left-wing newspaper) dried up. The two of them occupied a tiny flophouse room in a crowded tenement alleyway, with Akira spending his extra time reading and going to the movies. Heigo’s obsession with Russian literature continued, and he made his living as a popular benshi, a narrator for silent films.

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But the emergence of talkie films from abroad spelled doom for Heigo’s profession, leading to one of the great tragedies of Akira’s life: his brother’s suicide. Heigo’s death continued to haunt Akira for the rest of his life, but the mutual love of Russian literature he shared with his brother did not dissipate.

Now the sole surviving male child in his family, Akira felt responsible for providing for his mother and father, and began desperately searching for work. A chancing glance at a classified section of his father’s newspaper led to a job with Toho Studios. Kurosawa had stumbled into being a filmmaker.

Kurosawa worked steadfastly as an assistant director for the next seven years, finally landing his first full-directorial job with his judo film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Despite heavy editing by the Japanese wartime censors, the film was quite successful. Kurosawa’s star had begun to shine. He made three more films while the Second World War raged on, and then continued his work under a different (but according to Kurosawa, more relaxed) form of censorship during the American occupation that followed.

Another landmark came when Kurosawa first worked with the actor whose name is most synonymous with his films: Toshiro Mifune. Their work in 1948’s successful Drunken Angel was the first of a legendary 16 films the two made together.

“The Idiot” and Other Films

Kurosawa protested the cuts, saying it would be better “to cut the film lengthwise” — that is, vertically in half.

A poster for The Idiot (白痴), a passion project ok Kurosawa’s that ended in failure when the director and the studio battled over the ensuing film’s length.

It was after this film that Kurosawa first turned to a Russian story as a professional outing. Toho Cinemas was experiencing a strike, and Kurosawa, still wanting to put food on his family’s table, decided to direct some plays in the meantime - one of which was Chekhov’s one-act farce, The Proposal (Предложение). The income from this tided him over until his next film, The Quiet Duel (1949).

He ultimately began work on an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. He cast his right-hand man, Toshiro Mifune, as the film’s version of the roguish Rogozhin. Setsuko Hara, known in Japan as “the eternal virgin” (永遠の処女) and made legendary for her roles in Yasujirō Ozu’s films, was cast as the Japanese version of the bewitching and tortured Natasha Filippovna.

Unfortunately, Kurosawa’s love for the novel was also his undoing. In the end, he delivered a massive 225 minutes film. At nearly four hours, this movie was longer than the infamously lengthy Gone with the Wind. The producers believed such a film to be unmarketable, and ordered Kurosawa to perform massive cuts to his passion project. Despite protestations that it would be better “to cut the film lengthwise” - that is, vertically in half - the director still managed to whittle away 45 minutes, and presented a 180-minute version for the premier - but following negative reactions, the studio cut it further.

of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one…I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I’ve liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best, and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favorite author, and he is the one — I still think — who writes most honestly about human existence.

International Acclaim, American Disaster

Rashomon Trailer (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) American re-release trailer for Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON, now playing in a new 35mm restoration from Janus Films. Visit http://www.janusfilms.com/rashomon f… Above: The 1950 trailer for Rashomon (羅生門). Kurosawa’s interpretation of Ryounosokue Akutagawa’s Into a Grove established the director’s reputation internationally.

The Idiot did nothing to slow Kurosawa down. In fact, his very next film, Ikiru (生きる, 1952) was also based in part on another Russian classic - Tolstoy’s late-stage novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Смерть Ивана Ильича). This tale of a middle-aged bureaucratic mediocrity dealing with a terminal illness found great critical success, and remains one of Kurosawa’s most enduring films.

Kurosawa had reached his darkest hour.

What followed became Kurosawa’s golden age, as the director pumped out critical and financial darlings consistently for the next 15 years. Kurosawa was at the height of his powers, finding incredible success in both Japan and abroad, with Rashomon (and then Seven Samurai, and then Yojimbo) having transformed him into Japan’s first international film icon. This period also gave birth to other timeless classics, including The Lower Depths (1957) (based on a play by Russian playwright Maxim Gorky), Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress (1958, famous as the major inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars), High and Low(1963), and Redbeard (1965).

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By now Kurosawa was so well known abroad that American producers were begging to take the director on.

Kurosawa’s journey to Hollywood, however, was a disaster.

A poster for Dodesu-Kaden (どですかでん)、Kurosawa’s attempt at a domestic comeback after his failed tenure in America. The film was a flop, and Kurosawa fell further into despair.

One film (Runaway Train) Kurosawa was working on was never produced, and the famed director was booted from the production of Tora! Tora! Tora! within weeks of the start of filming under rumors that he was suffering a mental breakdown. Returning to Japan after two fruitless and frustrating years abroad, Kurosawa’s attempt at a rebound film, Dodesu kaden (1970), was a box office failure.

With rumors swirling about the director’s mental health, and facing a Japanese film industry that no longer wanted to finance his films, Kurosawa had reached his darkest hour. He attempted suicide.

Thankfully, Akira Kurosawa survived the attempt, and even recovered fairly quickly – at least physically speaking. And yet, he was sure his days as a filmmaker were over.

It was here that Russia stepped in.

An Obscure Choice Becomes A Soviet Classic

Over the next two grueling years, Kurosawa did everything he could to show the power, the beauty, and the terror of that Siberian landscape.

The homeland of the literature that had inspired and influenced so much of Akira Kurosawa’s life had now come to know Akira Kurosawa in kind.

Mosfilm, The Soviet Union’s largest film production company, had decided they wanted to enlist a Japanese director for a film based on a Russian novel that would promote Siberia. Who could possibly have been better than the most famous Japanese director of all, and one who was well known to love Russian literature? Kurosawa had suddenly gained a chance to return to film-making from a most unexpected source, and soon the director was on an Aeroflot plane headed for Moscow.

But what Russian novel should he choose? Kurosawa had read so many. Kurosawa’s future Russian co-director, Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasiliev, explained:

「黒澤さんに1本撮ってもらうことが決まったときに、黒澤さんから最初に提案されたのは、ゴーゴリの『タラス・ブーリバ』でした。これはコサックの話で、『戦争と平和』をつくったセルゲイ・ボンダルチューク監督がすでに準備をしていたため、候補から外れました。次に黒澤さんから出たのが『デルス・ウザーラ』でした。ソ連で過去２回それまで映画化されていたので、ソ連側は「どうかな」という感じでしたが、黒澤さんが「ぜひこれにしよう」と推して決まりました。」 When it was decided that we’d be having Kurosawa direct a film for us, the first book he suggested to us was Taras Bulba by Gogol. This was a cossack story, and since Sergei Bondarchuk, director of War and Peace, was already preparing to film a version of it, it was out of the competition. The next book Kurosawa put forward was Dersu Uzala. Since this had been filmed two times before in the USSR, the Soviet side wasn’t so sure, but it was all decided when Kurosawa insisted by saying “I’d absolutely like to go with this.””

Dersu Uzala is the 1923 memoir of the exploration of the Russian Far East by Vladimir Arsenyev, who was assisted on many expeditions by the eponymous Nanai tribesman. In fact, Kurosawa had first read the book decades earlier, and had even hoped to film a version of it in the late 30s before scrapping the idea (unlike The Idiot and The Lower Depths, he had decided it needed its true Russian setting). The fact that the director had pulled such an obscure (by non-Russian standards) yet so appropriate Russian novel from his back catalog of Russian literature was surprising, and impressed his Soviet counterparts. Vasiliev’s interpreter and moderator during an interview, Masahiro Ikeda, had this to say:

「ソ連側は、黒澤さんが『デルス・ウザーラ』を提案したことに驚いたそうです。ドストエフスキーやトルストイの作品も候補に挙がっていましたが、驚くのは黒澤さんがロシア文学をたくさん読んでいることです。『戦争と平和』だけでも10回くらい読んでいる、と聞いています。仮に他の日本の映画監督が1975年ごろにソ連に呼ばれても、『デルス・ウザーラ』を撮りたいという希望は絶対に出なかったでしょう。」 “It seems that the Soviet side was quite surprised when Kurosawa suggested Dersu Uzala. While Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy’s works were also listed as candidates, what truly surprised them was how much Russian literature Kurosawa had read. They had heard that he had read even War and Peace itself about ten times. Even if some other Japanese film director from around 1975 had been called upon by the Soviet Union, it’s highly doubtful that anyone else would have said they wanted to film Dersu Uzala.”

(JP) Link: Interview with Russian Dersu Uzala Co-director Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasiliev

黒澤明と『デルス・ウザーラ』

黒澤明が唯一、海外で撮影した日ソ合作映画『デルス・ウザーラ』の助監督と映画評論家の西村雄一郎氏が語る、ロシアでの黒澤明。Link to Source

Some time later, Kurosawa was back in Russia, flying over the Siberian Taiga on the way to the distant Primorsky Krai and the town of Arsenyev (named after the author of Dersu Uzala). With him on this journey (ironically taking him thousands of miles away from Moscow but not terribly far away from Hokkaido) were but four close Japanese associates and an entire Russian crew. As he looked out the window and down towards the never-ending sea of trees, he was heard to say, “You know…Chekhov said that the beauty of the Taiga lies in its vastness. But how do you show that in a film?”

Over the next two grueling years, Kurosawa did everything he could to show the power, the beauty, and the terror of that Siberian landscape. He and his crew endured blistering heat in the summer and negative 30 degree winters, endless swarms of mosquitoes and ticks that would emerge from the swampland, and struggled to work their way through linguistic differences and beguiling Soviet filming requirements (such as sub-par film stock and strictly enforced daily shooting quotas). They grew close to their Russian counterparts, developing lasting friendships through the intense effort of creating a film in such an extreme environment.

The result is a film that is often called one of Kurosawa’s most visually stunning.

The video release cover for Dersu Uzala, which re-established Kurosawa as a director of supreme power and vision.

Kurosawa’s Post-Soviet Career

Dersu Uzala released in Japan to a fairly good box office but middling reviews. Around the world, the film fared much better. It sold 20.4 million tickets in the Soviet Union, raked in $1.2 million at the North American box office, and was awarded two major honors: the Golden Prize at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival, and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the 1976 Academy Awards. Neither Kurosawa nor Mosfilm expected this win, leading it to be accepted live by an unrelated Soviet director who happened to be present.

Kurosawa later returned to Moscow, where a party was held in his honor, and he was finally able to see the Academy Award he had won. According to co-director Vasilev, it had been passed immediately on to the KGB after the Academy Awards, and no-one involved in filming had even laid eyes on it for the following six months.

“Dersu Uzala” Wins Foreign Language Film: 1976 Oscars Jacqueline Bisset and Jack Valenti present the Oscar® for Foreign Language Film to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for “Dersu Uzala” at the 48th Acad… Above: The USSR is awarded the Academy Award for Best Language Film for Dersu Uzala. Neither Kurosawa nor his co-director attended because no one involved with the production believed they’d ever win.

Kurosawa intended to make a second film in Russia, to be entitled Mask of the Red Death, and even wanted to use the star of Dersu Uzala again, but it slipped through the cracks after he returned to Japan. Here Kurosawa’s direct interaction with Russia and his recreation of narratives from that nation halted – but the connection gained from those stories, stories he had read clutching books borrowed from his older brother as he walked to school, remained.

Dersu Uzala did not save Kurosawa’s domestic career in Japan – it instead started a trend of his films being financed from and watched in large part from foreign sources. However, this offer from the Soviet Union may have saved Kurosawa himself, allowing him to return to the creative work that gave him so much life. As Kurosawa himself said,

「私から映画を引いたらゼロという事だろう。」 Take me, subtract movies, and you’ll get zero.

Kurosawa directed four more films in his lifetime, at least two of which are often considered masterpieces. Kurosawa’s Oscar statuette for Dersu Uzala remains at Mosfilm, where it sits in a glass case in the executive boardroom. The connection between Kurosawa and Russia lasts to this day.

Sources

Kurosawa, Akira. Something Like an Autobiography. Vintage Books, 1983. Print.

Nogami, Teruyo. Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa. Stone Bridge Press, Inc., 2006. Print.

Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. University of California Press, 1998. Print.

Vasiliev, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Interview by Yuichiro Nishimura. “黒澤明と『デルス・ウザーラ』,” Wochikochi, 2011-02-01, http://www.wochikochi.jp/topstory/2011/02/kurosawa.php. Accessed 25 October. 2018.

小林信彦, “国際性」と「国民性」が同居.” Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune. https://star-director.info/category9/entry204.html

Galbraith IV, Stuart. The Emperor and the Wolf. Faber & Faber, 2003. Print.

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