Why Akira Kurosawa's version of the ``Tokyo Olympics'' never materialized, Part 2

"Ode to Joy" was played as filming began.

Kurosawa left no testimony about the illusory "Tokyo Olympiad" that never came to fruition. The presence or absence of image boards or a script was also not made public, and according to his assistant Matsue Yoichi, "It was probably just before he wrote the script" ("Another Version of Kurosawa Akira," Bunshun Bunko Visual Edition), so even if anything remained, it would probably only have been a memo. Instead, we can find traces of "Tokyo Olympiad" in Kurosawa's remaining films. For example, at the end of his later film " Rhapsody in August " (1991), an old woman walks through a torrential rain with an umbrella, followed by her grandchildren running after her. The dynamism of the running figure captured with a telephoto lens is a brilliant depiction of the dynamism of the flesh and blood that goes beyond fiction, and it makes you think that if Kurosawa had filmed the Olympics, we would have seen many such seductive images.

Film critic Yoshio Shirai points out that the prototype of this scene can also be found in the scene where cash is handed over on a train in " High and Inferno ." This scene was actually shot inside the Kodama Express, but it was done under extremely harsh conditions with a special timetable. In fact, the scene where the cash is handed over before and after passing over a railway bridge could only be shot in 14 seconds, which is the actual time, and it was done in one take with eight cameras carefully prepared. Shirai puts forward the theory that "since he was unable to film the Olympics by pushing the staff and cast into the limiting situation of being on a train that could never run again, he created a sort of pseudo-sports situation on the train, (omitted) and tried to get all the staff fired up to deal with an unexpected event at the Olympic Games" (A Different Theory of Kurosawa Akira). Although this is an interesting story, as we have seen, at the time of filming "High and Inferno," Kurosawa had not yet decided to quit Olympic films. Rather, this filming may have had a rehearsal meaning for the Olympics.

Furthermore, for " Red Beard ," which he made after deciding to decline, Kurosawa played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on the set from the very beginning of filming, "playing it for him and repeatedly saying, 'If this tone doesn't come out at the end, the film is no good, if this melody doesn't come out,'" (Kinema Junpo Publishing, " Film Directors of the World 3 : Kurosawa Akira"). Kurosawa had the idea of ​​equipping several hot air balloons released into the sky above the National Stadium with a 3D sound system and playing "Ode to Joy" all at once from the speakers of those balloons. Kurosawa had initially planned to make a sequel to "Olympiad," but it seems that the failure of that attempt led to the succession of "Red Beard." In fact, this film may have played a role in helping people forget "Tokyo Olympiad." Filming began on December 21, 1963, and was scheduled to be completed in June of the following year, but due to various interruptions in filming, including Kayama Yuzo's repeated illnesses and Kurosawa's own bouts of pneumonia, filming was not completed until December 19, 1964. Before we knew it, the Tokyo Olympics had ended two months earlier.

For Kurosawa, this film surpassed his previous record of the longest filming time, "Seven Samurai." "Red Beard" was released on April 3, 1965. Two weeks prior, Ichikawa Kon's "Tokyo Olympiad" had also been released, and both films were huge hits, monopolizing the top two box office records for that year. As a result, Kurosawa spent the entire period from before the Olympics began until the release of the documentary immersed in "Red Beard." Is this coincidence just a coincidence?

Hideko Takamine and the Olympics