I Live In Fear (1995) How make-up created the paranoia

The 1995 movie I Live In Fear is a Japanese cinematic film directed my Akira Kurosawa, circles around Kiichi Nakajima (played by Toshiro Mifune) who is a stubborn old businessman, so fearful of a nuclear attack that he is determined to move his entire family to the safety of Brazil. In this 1955 fantasy, paranoia is a distinctive characteristic that is constantly leaving its characters in anxiety and frustration. Creating the theme of paranoia was much moved along and aided in this film by the use of makeup.

Makeup in film is one of the basic designer aspects needed to create any movie, film, or show. Uses of makeup can be broken down into three categories which are basic, corrective, and character. Basic makeup is used simply to compensate for negative changes in one’s appearance brought on by the television or movie process such as the lighting on set bringing out an oily or shinny appearance to one’s face that can easily be fixed by foundation. Corrective makeup is used to correct or enhance one’s features such as covering up a blemish or countering to bring out one’s natural cheekbones. Character makeup is used to change major characteristics in one’s appearance such as turning someone into a zombie or even something as simple as giving them sideburns.

In the movie I Live In Fear, all three of these techniques were used throughout the movie. In the 1950s, for the movies and shows that had not yet switched to kinemacolor, technicolor, or cinecolor and were still wading their way through the classic “black and white”, panchromatic film was still the much more affordable rage. Because of this, makeup techniques in the 1950s was something that would make heads turn. Film makeup is vastly different from the looks and techniques in stage makeup (which often requires even the most buff of men to wear at least a thin layer of eyeliner and blush), but it is even more different when it comes to the comparisons of makeup used in black and white movies to thus used in technicolor movies. Because panchromatic emulsion is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, it created a whole new playing field for the design crew on a film. Panchromatic increased the film's sensitivity to red and yellow along with blue and violet, requiring a yellow-red lens filter to correct it. However, after making the switch from orthochromatic film (which had problems such as making blond hair long washed-out, blue eyes look almost white and made red lips almost black), they had at least some idea already as how to fix the problem. In order for a female face to look as if it is wearing completely normal makeup in a black and white film, one must have blush on the forehead above the eyebrow, lavender eye-shadow, black beading on the eyelashes, blue grease paint under the eyes, blush lining either side of the nose going vertically, yellow lipstick, and flesh colored great paint with white, lavender, or yellow powder on the chin, neck, and framing the indents on the cheeks left by a smile. This makeup with give the actress (or actor) a beautiful look on camera, but to the set crew around her would make her look like a walking clown who held her breath for too long.

Now because of the intense work it would require to apply this makeup effect, we are left with very little doubt that the makeup choices made in I Live In Fear were no accident of director Akira Kurosawa. From the moment the character Kiichi Nakajima walks on screen, it is obvious the visible difference from the artistry of his face in comparison to the faces around him. His makeup looks like that of either a comic book boy or even a stage performer who was just dropped on screen. His hair looks jelled back and as if it was sprayed with 10 cans of hair spray, his eyebrows are at least 20% artificial and glued on by his makeup artist, and he has very artificial looking age lines drawn about his face (which in retrospect makes sense considering the actor was roughly 35 years old at the time the movie was released and was playing a character that I can only assume was in his late 60s). For a majority of the film, Kiichi Nakajima remains the only character sporting this subtle but outrageous makeup which could even be taken as a metaphor for how he is the odd one out in the movie. Later in the movie after burning down his family’s business, you see Kiichi at his biggest moment of desperation. And in this moment that is his peak of struggle, you also see his peak of makeup as his ribs and bones are contoured making him look staved with his robe hung open around his chest (In this scene you also see a lot of his peers and family covered in dirt. However, this was done in such a way that the dirt spread on their faces perfectly contoured their face, defining their cheekbones). At the end of the movie however, Kiichi’s makeup has drastically lessened.

It is as if his makeup followed his mindset from being the “odd one out” with a lot of makeup, to his peak of struggle and frustration with his insane starvation makeup, and then finally with his lessened makeup as he let go of his mind completely and drifted into utter insanity without a care.

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