SOMETHING LIKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY The Quiet Duel The most memorable part of filming THE QUIET DUEL was the shooting of the climax scene. The pain and bitterness the hero has kept hidden in his heart overwhelm him, and he reveals the secret of his rejection of his fiancée to the reformed streetwalker who works for him as a nurse. For that scene I was planning an uncut take unusually long for that period of the cinema -- over five minutes. The night before the shooting neither Mifune nor the actress playing the nurse, Sengoku Noriko, was able to sleep. With something of the feeling of the night before a decisive battle, I, too, was sleepless. The next day, as we prepared to roll the camera for the scene, a tense atmosphere enveloped the sound stage. To direct the action, I positioned myself between two lights, planting a foot on each base. Mifune's and Sengoku's performances revealed a do-or-die battle spirit. As the seconds ticked by, their acting reached a fever pitch of tension, and sparks seemed to fly as from a fireworks display. I could feel the perspiration forming in my clenched fists. Finally, when Mifune broke down in tears with the misery he was confessing, I heard the lights next to me begin to rattle. I immediately realized it was I who was shaking. The shudders of emotion passing through my body were rattling the lights I stood on. "Damn," I thought, "I should have sat on a chair," but it was too late. Wrapping my arms around myself to try to control the shaking, I glanced toward the camera and nearly gasped. The cameraman, who was looking through the viewfinder and operating the camera, was crying like a baby. Every few seconds it seemed he couldn't see through the viewfinder for the tears, and he would quickly wipe his eyes. My heart began to pound. The photographer's tears were clear evidence of the moving quality of Mifune's and Sengoku's acting, but if the camera work should become distorted because the actors succeeded in making the photographer cry, all would be for naught. My attention focused much more closely on the cameraman than on the actors' performance. I have never before or since felt that any single take was as excruciatingly long as this one. When the tear-stained, contorted face of the photographer finally voiced an "O.K., cut" at the end of the scene, I was overcome with a tremendous sense of relief. While everyone on the set remained caught in the extreme tension of the scene, I felt like a man inebriated. Then I realized that I, the director, had forgotten to say, "O.K., cut." I guess I was still young then. Today, no matter how moving a scene is, no matter how stunning the actors' performances are, I can watch with total calm collectedness. But there is something a little bit sad about this ability. The reason we could do a scene like the climax of THE QUIET DUEL and get so excited and involved in what we were doing is because Mifune, Sengoku and I were all young. lf we were told to do that scene over again today, we couldn't. It is the recognition of this fact that makes THE QUIET DUEL a picture for which I feel a great nostalgia. From SOMETHING LIKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Akira Kurosawa, translated by Audie E. Bock, copyright © 1982 by Akira Kurosawa. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. For online information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet Web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.