Something Like An Autobiography

by Akira Kurosawa

“If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.”

What is necessary is to show them something that is complete and has no excess. When you are shooting, of course, you film only what you believe is necessary. But very often you realize only after having shot it that you didn’t need it after all. You don’t need what you don’t need. Yet human nature wants to place value on things in direct proportion to the amount of labor that went into making them.

when you explain to an actor what he should do, you must also make him understand why he should do it that way—

Yama-san, I promise you I’ll try a little harder, a little longer. This is the memorial speech I offer up to Yama-san.

am not a special person. I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted. I simply do not like to show my weakness, and I hate to lose, so I am a person who tries hard. That’s all there is to me.

They never recognized that movies are made by a cooperative work force that is created by a union of individual human talents. They never recognized how much effort was required to bring about that union.

An actor who is not constantly given new roles and new subjects to tackle dries out and withers like a tree you plant in the garden and then fail to water.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way.