Background and
Dersu Uzala in 1906 Akira Kurosawa had first thought of adapting
Arsenyev's book Dersu Uzala (an autobiography of Arsenyev's time exploring the
Russian Far East) during his days as an assistant director. After completing his film
The Idiot (1951), he asked to help draft a script. This script adapted the setting to Japan—making
Dersu Uzala an
Orok native of Hokkaido—but Kurosawa believed the script was uninteresting and that the relocation to Japan did not work well, so the project was abandoned. In 1971, there was interest in Kurosawa shooting a film in the
Soviet Union, but it was while Kurosawa later promoted ''
Dodes'ka-den (1970) at the Moscow Film Festival that serious discussions were had regarding a new production. In December of that year, Kurosawa attempted suicide during a difficult period in his career, questioning his creative ability after the commercial failure of Dodes'ka-den
and the disastrous production of Tora! Tora! Tora!'' (1970), and the subsequent denial of funds for his productions by Japanese studios. At this time too, Kurosawa was both mentally and physically unwell. The film historian and biographer
Donald Richie writes that Kurosawa also had an unhappy domestic life.
Development and pre-production Kurosawa returned to the project of adapting
Dersu Uzala in 1972 when the film producer received a communication from the
All-Soviet Union of Filmmakers indicating they were committed to a Soviet–Japanese production. Matsue and Kurosawa's script advisor,
Teruyo Nogami, flew to Moscow in early 1973 to sign a production agreement stipulating that although it would be a Soviet production, Kurosawa would maintain full artistic control. Nogami states that originally, the Soviet side wanted
Toshiro Mifune to be cast in the role of Arsenyev, but Matsue persuaded them that Mifune would not stay in
Siberia for a shoot lasting for years. The film scholar
Stuart Galbraith IV references
Variety articles that indicated that Kurosawa had wanted to work with Mifune again, including claims from the magazine that he may still be cast even after Yury Solomin was hired for the role. Mifune's son later said that Kurosawa asked Mifune to film with him, and while Mifune was eager to, he was struggling financially and could not afford a prolonged shoot. Kurosawa signed a contract with
Mosfilm on 14 March 1973; the conglomerate came into the production as an investor in return for distribution rights in Japan. Kurosawa sent a scenario to the Soviet Union but the Soviet draft written by
Yuri Nagibin had changed details to include more action scenes. At a conference in October, it was decided that production would proceed based on Kurosawa's draft. Kurosawa and Nagibin worked together and cut much from Kurosawa's earlier drafts that focused on
existential questions of life which Kurosawa wrote after the commercial failure of ''Dodes'ka-den''. There were stipulations made by the Soviet side to limit the number of Japanese crew. In addition to Kurosawa, Nogami, and Matsue, Kurosawa brought his long-time collaborator
Asakazu Nakai and two assistant directors: Norio Minoshima, and Tamotsu Kawasaki. Kawasaki was requested by the Soviet side because he was fluent in Russian, but he later left the production in the winter of 1974 due to difficulties between the Japanese and Soviet crew members. During their time in the Soviet Union, the Japanese crew were closely monitored by state police, but were given access to locations in
Primorsky that were usually forbidden for foreigners to visit. Soviet production quotas required a minimum length of film to be shot each day which initially caused friction between Nogami and the Soviet staff, but after comparing the two systems of planning they discovered the schedule was similar. Due to a lack of impressive actors,
screen tests for the role of Arsenyev and Dersu were prolonged. Even after Solomin and Manzuk were chosen, screen tests continued to be conducted until they were formally given the role on 1 February 1974.
Filming Filming of
Dersu Uzala began in February 1974. The film used . These cameras used
film stock at
a speed of ASA 40 (according to Nogami, the Japanese industry used film stock at a sensitivity of ASA 100–120). The film stock was low quality and the cameras required three men to move them. This led to issues when locations became too warm or too cold as the film would swell or the cameras would stop working. On the shoot there were five Japanese members and seventy Soviets, with an additional thirty soldiers on work detail. Kurosawa maintained a good relationship with the Soviet crew, with many of them in turn admiring the director and Nakai, the cinematographer. The crew began to move in teams to Siberia, with Kurosawa and Nogami leaving Moscow for
Khabarovsk on the 8 May before travelling by train to
Arsenyev (named after the film's protagonist). Conditions during production were harsh. When shooting began in the
taiga, the crew were beset by the summer heat, mosquitoes, and ticks. Temperatures dropped to minus forty degrees and Kurosawa and Nakai suffered from sickness, with Kurosawa developing frostbite. During preparations for a night shoot, Kurosawa directed the crew to hose down trees to form icicles and hang bottles from the branches, so that the resulting sound coming from the objects hitting each other would create a mysterious atmosphere when combined with the image of Dersu expressing his fears next to a campfire. However, after they began hosing down the trees, the water in the hosepipe froze. The propeller of an old aeroplane was used for the effect of wind. Despite accompanying the crew for eight months for one job, the engine would not start due to the cold. After two hours, the plane's engine caught fire and the shoot had to be cancelled. Whenever a blizzard was needed for the shoot, precreated piles of snow were tossed in the air by shovels in front of a fan. Kurosawa initially wanted to use a wild tiger for certain scenes, but the process of capturing the animal and persuading it to follow stage directions proved impossible. The tiger collapsed, Solomin complained about the animal's treatment and Kurosawa called the shoot off. When they returned to Moscow an old circus tiger was used to complete the scenes. Originally the plan had been for location shooting to finish before the end of the year. It was decided that only the reshoots and scenes absolutely necessary to be shot in Arsenyev would be filmed on location, with the rest filmed in Moscow. Under pressure from the Soviet producers, January 1975 was a difficult moment for the crew as Kurosawa became sleepless and drank heavily. He and Nakai argued over filming arrangements, and a particularly difficult mountain shoot failed to be properly realised. The crew returned to Moscow on 18 January, Kurosawa became angry regularly as filming continued and he became more exhausted. Filming wrapped on 28 April 1975.
Editing and post-production During filming, Kurosawa would send
rushes to be developed overnight, but was upset by a decision made to punch holes in the middle of the film which contained processing streaks or
emulsions, rendering it unusable. He edited the film at Mosfilm's studios in collaboration with
Andrei Tarkovskys regular collaborator,
Lyudmila Feiginova. Kurosawa initially thought to hire
Masaru Sato to compose music for the film, but decided to use a Russian composer instead. After watching several Soviet films and conferring with his collaborators, he hired
Isaac Schwartz. The film was completed and Kurosawa returned to Japan in mid-June. The runtime of the film is 141 minutes. As production was ending, Chinese officials charged the film with anti-Chinese sentiment, Kurosawa contested this characterisation, but did have difficulty writing the parts of the film's Chinese characters. Galbraith notes that by the time of its completion, the estimated cost of production was , but that differences in production and bookkeeping methods have obscured a more precise figure. == Themes ==