The Apprentice

It’s been a good month for DVDs focusing on the early films of legendary directors. Following hot on the heels of Eureka!’s two Michelangelo Antonioni releases is the BFI’s four-disc Early Kurosawa box set, which collects six films the Japanese director made between 1943 and 1947.

Looking back on his career, Akira Kurosawa once said that his 1948 feature Drunken Angel – his first collaboration with his long-term muse, actor Toshiro Mifune – represented his first mature work. ‘In this picture, I finally discovered myself,’ he declared. However, this box set is fascinating because it shows the thirtysomething director developing his technical mastery of the medium within the constraints of state-run cinema. The trained artist is developing his palette, prior to unveiling the full scope of his personal vision on a broader cinematic canvas.

Sanshiro Sugata (1943) is Kurosawa’s debut and it chronicles a young man’s spiritual journey through the study and practice of judo. The film was a box-office hit and Kurosawa reluctantly revisited the story two years later in Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two, retaining most of the orginal film’s cast and pitting his titular hero against a new set of problems.

The Most Beautiful is a 1944 propaganda film about female volunteer workers in an optics factory, manufacturing lenses for binoculars and gunsights. It was shot in a documentary style with professional actors and the director insisted that his cast should live together for the duration of the production to create a sense of camaraderie. They Who Step On The Tiger’s Tail (1945) is, at 58 minutes, the shortest feature Kurosawa ever made. Adapted from a 12th Century tale that was a staple of Japan’s Kabuki and Noh theatre traditions, the film was completed during the early days of the American occupation following World War Two. It tells the story of a lord and his bodyguard, who disguise themselves as Buddhist monks in order to evade capture by enemy soldiers.

No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) is Kurosawa’s first post-war film proper. It stars Yasujiro Ozu regular Setsuko Hara as the privileged daughter of a professor. Although the film sidesteps specific political and historical references, it asks some very probing questions about the nationalistic mood that led Japan down the path to war. One year later came One Wonderful Sunday, a brilliant and visually striking comedy about a young couple struggling to have a special day amidst the bombed-out remains of Tokyo. In many ways, it can be regarded as Kurosawa’s more optimistic contemporaneous equivalent of Italian neorealism’s The Bicycle Thieves.

What Early Kurosawa reveals is that the director’s apprenticeship was better than many other filmmakers’ careers.
Early Kurosawa (BFI) is out now on DVD.

FILM DIARY: What I've been watching in 2011...

Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa, 1943) (7/10)

Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two (Akira Kurosawa, 1945) (6/10)

The Most Beautiful (Akira Kurosawa, 1944) (6/10)

They Who Step On The Tiger’s Tail (Akira Kurosawa, 1945) (7/10)

No Regrets For Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa, 1946) (8/10)

One Wonderful Sunday (Akira Kurosawa, 1947) (9/10)

COLIN HOULSON

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