After having seen his co-directing debut Uma (1941-also reviewed) a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to open up my copy of the Criterion AK: 100 set,and finally say cowabunga, to Kurosawa.
View on the film:
Later saying that he looked back at his first chance at solo directing as one "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 in the experience." co-editor/(with occasional collaborator Toshio Goto) writer/directing auteur Akira Kurosawa lays out the canvas for major motifs which would run across his credits.
Reuniting with cinematographer Akira Mimura after he worked on Kurosawa's first co-directing film Uma (1941), Kurosawa gives the Judo fighting set-pieces a real crunch,with rolling whip-pans and edge of the seat push-ins in the final round between Higaki (played with a dastardly relish by Ryunosuke Tsukigata) and Sugata (played with beaming determination by regular collaborator Susumu Fujita.)
Whilst yet to draw his distinctive blood spray, Kurosawa heightens Sugata's mastery of deadly Judo skills with bellowing gusts of wind matching each of his moves,and rough-edge screen-wipes slicing into each level of self-discovery made by Sugata.
Finding Tsuneo Tomita's novel so exciting that he woke up studio head Nobuyoshi Morita in the middle of the night to ask him to buy the rights,and later claiming that he wrote the adaptation in one night, the 17 minutes of footage cut by the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces banning any mention of "chuukou" (a type of loyalty and devotion to one's superiors and blind obedience to orders, associated with Kamikaze pilots at the time) leads to the screenplay by Kurosawa having an unsurprising choppy tone, as Sugata's comes of age in his fight of self-discovery.
View on the film:
Later saying that he looked back at his first chance at solo directing as one "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 in the experience." co-editor/(with occasional collaborator Toshio Goto) writer/directing auteur Akira Kurosawa lays out the canvas for major motifs which would run across his credits.
Reuniting with cinematographer Akira Mimura after he worked on Kurosawa's first co-directing film Uma (1941), Kurosawa gives the Judo fighting set-pieces a real crunch,with rolling whip-pans and edge of the seat push-ins in the final round between Higaki (played with a dastardly relish by Ryunosuke Tsukigata) and Sugata (played with beaming determination by regular collaborator Susumu Fujita.)
Whilst yet to draw his distinctive blood spray, Kurosawa heightens Sugata's mastery of deadly Judo skills with bellowing gusts of wind matching each of his moves,and rough-edge screen-wipes slicing into each level of self-discovery made by Sugata.
Finding Tsuneo Tomita's novel so exciting that he woke up studio head Nobuyoshi Morita in the middle of the night to ask him to buy the rights,and later claiming that he wrote the adaptation in one night, the 17 minutes of footage cut by the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces banning any mention of "chuukou" (a type of loyalty and devotion to one's superiors and blind obedience to orders, associated with Kamikaze pilots at the time) leads to the screenplay by Kurosawa having an unsurprising choppy tone, as Sugata's comes of age in his fight of self-discovery.