Saturday, September 15, 2012

Eat this chair!

[Kurosawa has to undergo a directing test upon completion of Sugata Sanshiro; the examiners include the censors of the Ministry of the Interior, but also other directors, including Ozu.]

When the test finally began, it was horrible. In a room with a long table, the censors were all lined up on one side. Down at the very end were Ozu and Tasaka, and next to them an office boy. ...

The point of the censors' argument was that almost everything in the film was "British-American." they seemed to find the little incident of the love scene" between Sanshiro and his rival's daughter on the shrine stairs -- the censors called this a "love scene," but all the two did was meet each other for the first time there -- to be particularly "British-American," and they harped as if they had discovered some great  oracular truth. If I listened attentively, I would fly into a rage, so I did my best to look out the window and think of other things.

But I reached the limits of my endurance with their spitefulness. I felt the color of my face changing, and there was nothing I could do about it. "Bastards! Go to hell! Eat this chair!" Thinking such thoughts, I rose involuntarily to my feet, but as I did so, Ozu stood up simultaneously and began to speak: "If a hundred points is a perfect score, Sugata Sanshiro gets one hundred twenty! Congratulations, Kurosawa!" Ignoring the unhappy censors, Ozu strode over to me, whispered the name of a Ginza restaurant in my ear and said, "Let's go there and celebrate."

Something like an Autobiography, Kurosawa

1 comment:

leoboiko said...

only snippet search, sadly, but it seem it's:

この椅子でも喰いやがれ! 畜生! 勝手にしゃがれ!