Cast:
Susumu Fujita (Sanshiro Sugata), Denjirō Ōkōchi (Shōgorō Yano), Yukiko Todoroki (Sayo Murai), Ryūnosuke Tsukigata (Gennosuke Higaki), Takashi Shimura (Hansuke Murai), Ranko Hanai (Osumi Kodana), Sugisaku Aoyama (Tsunetami Iimura), Ichiro Sugai (Police Chief Michitsune Mishima), and Yoshio Kosugi (Master Saburō Kodama) Directed by Akira Kurosawa (#968 - Throne of Blood and #1385 - Seven Samurai)
Review:
"I just had a gut feeling that "This is it". There was no logical explanation for my reaction, but I believed wholeheartedly in my instinct and did not doubt for an instant." - Akira Kurosawa
Sure, a martial arts drama seems a bit odd to consider within the bounds of action, but I think the quality involved behind and in front of the camera merits a worthy case. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name that was written by Tsuneo Tomita. He was the son of Tomita Tsunejiro, a famed disciple of judo, a system of unarmed combat that is part of the modern Japanese martial art since its creation by Kanō Jigorō in 1882 as a clear mark away from jujutsu in its form of free sparring without weapon training, and it became especially important when the Tokyo Metropolitan Police hosted tournaments to see which martial art was superior, with the result being that the police academy would adapt judo as their official training style. This form of full contact designed with the intent to either throw an opponent, pin them or force submission without outright striking has proven an influence on other martial arts that includes mixed martial arts (MMA). Tomita (described as "Four Guardians of the Kōdōkan" for him being an early competitor in judo when it began its split from jujutsu), alongside Maeda Mitsuyo, would do numerous exhibitions in the United States in the early 20th century; the younger Tomita based his character of Sanshiro Sugata on his father's colleague Shiro Saigo. Amidst all of that information, it also is the feature film debut for Akira Kurosawa. He had grown up with watching films due to his upbringing, but it was his time spent with his brother Heigo in his teenage years that proved important in seeing films alongside theater and circus performances. In 1935, he was hired by Photo Chemical Laboratories (a company that would merge with the Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company, Toho Eiga, and Jenkins Osawa Studio to form what we know as Toho in 1937), where he would serve as an assistant director for a number of years, primarily under director Kajirō Yamamoto. Uma (1941) had him basically serve as a director in terms of control of the production when Yamamoto was busy with shooting a different film (Kurosawa, as a 4-F, was able to build on his career in the midst of World War II). It was he who told Kurosawa to take up screenwriting in order to be a good director, which he would do for all of his feature films along with a handful of other productions. The basis for Kurosawa making this film came from his gut instinct in seeing an advertisement of Tsuneo Tomita's forthcoming novel in the newspaper, but his lobbying for Toho to buy the rights to make it as a movie did not occur until it was published (indeed, when he got down to read the book, he found it commercially appealing and adaptable to his own interests); despite his enthusiasm, Toho actually approached Masahiro Makino to direct before he declined, which opened the door for Kurosawa to step in, and the film was shot in the winter of 1942.
The movie originally ran at 97 minutes on release, but it was trimmed by Japanese censors to 79 minutes (it should be noted that one defending member of the board was Yasujiro Ozu, who called it an important artistic achievement despite some charges of being too "British-American"). Some of the scenes cut did not survive, and the aforementioned cut version begins with text (since it was re-released by Toho in 1952) that also comes into play when describing a cut sequence. The movie has been remade five times, although the first two took inspiration from Kurosawa's screenplay rather than the novel. Two years later, Kurosawa would do a sequel called Sanshiro Sugata Part II, doing so at the behest of requests to do a propaganda film for the war effort that was released in May 1945, mere months before the surrender of the war (The Most Beautiful, his second feature, was also a propaganda work released in April); the film sees Okochi, Fujita, Tsukigata, and Todoroki return, but it is generally considered a lesser sequel. Let us get the obvious part out of the way: it is the journey of the hero that matters more than outright action with the hero, but it sure does pack an important punch with its execution by Kurosawa in the art of nuance. Beyond his use of wipes and shots of the weather to depict the mood of characters is a movie that seems quite prescient in making an action movie built on emotional growth, which Fujita does pretty well as the main focus. Beyond just being a judo hero, he has the brimming confidence required in making the journey believable in all the facets required in sincerity (Fujita became a star during the war for playing the hero in war flicks, much to his subsequent regret, and he shifted to supporting roles by the mid 1940s). Seeing him jump in a lotus pond and cling to a stake in an attempt to show his worth to his master is probably the noted sequence, since it shows him rising the occasion of just what matters most when lying in a pond in the spur of the moment: self-realization. Ōkōchi doesn't say much as the mentor figure, but he does exactly what is needed in the art of stoic balance, one best represented by the sequence of him handling jujutsu toughs in a river with calm patience. Todoroki makes a decent pairing with Fujita in graceful quietness, but it is Tsukigata who sticks out more in the adversarial role, slithering patiently for the inevitable climax, which is handled expertly in a windy hillside (incidentally, Kurosawa likened the character played by Tsukigata to Mephistopheles). There are four general fights shown in the film, which is handled with quiet ease that manages to not muddle the overall arc, showing that Kurosawa was all primed to become a force worth viewing in his first effort as director in a victory of style. He would get better over the course of time as a director, but one cannot go wrong with starting their curiosity here with a movie that packs the ideal punches: A Kurosawa effort and an action triumph.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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