One of the pleasures of a challenge like this is getting exposed to work by filmmakers whose work I have enjoyed in the past but this time with films I haven’t seen before. That has certainly been the case with Akira Kurosawa. I had only seen a couple of his samurai films in the past, but with this entry, I have seen three more of his films, and only one of them had a samurai in it. That said, I was a little surprised to learn Kurosawa based some of his films off non-Japanese sources. High and Low was based off an Ed McBain novel while Ikiru was partially inspired by a Tolstoy novella. I knew Kurosawa found inspiration from William Shakespeare, but these other adaptations were news to me. It would then only stand to reason that Kurosawa’s own work would inspire other filmmakers to do the same with his, the two best known examples being how The Seven Samurai inspired the American remake The Magnificent Seven while today’s entry Yojimbo was remade by the Italian director Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars.
As it is, Kurosawa apparently loved The Magnificent Seven but was less enthused about A Fistful of Dollars. That’s no doubt due to the fact the Americans actually asked Kurosawa for permission first while the Italians (as many say is their wont) just decided to use the story without asking first.
With that in mind, let me say a little about A Fistful of Dollars right now by way of comparison with Yojimbo. Both films feature a nameless protagonist, though Yojimbo‘s ronin gives a name that many people consider made up. Dollars has Clint Eastwood in the first of the three “Dollars Trilogy” films as a character often referred to as The Man With No Name. I’ve seen all three, but honestly, Fistful of Dollars is the one I remember the least well. In fact, what I remember best of it are the scenes that were reused in the Back to the Future sequels involving a steel plate, hidden under a poncho, being used to protect Eastwood’s character during a gunfight. I have stronger recollections for the other two films in the trilogy, namely For a Few Dollars More where he and Lee Van Cleef team up for very different reasons, and then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where Van Cleef is now the villain and a very different character, a fact that leads me to wonder as I sit here if Eastwood’s nameless gunslinger is also a different character in each film. I’m not entirely sure. All I can say for certain is I’ll be hitting The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly later on in the Stacker Challenge.
But assuming Eastwood’s character is the same in all three films, I can say that there may not be much in common between The Man With No Name and frequent Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune’s ronin, a man who gives his name as Kuwabatake Sanjuro in a manner that, as stated, suggests he made the name up on the spot. Eastwood’s character is far more mercenary than Sanjuro from my recollection. Sanjuro comes to the village in this film and basically decides to free it from a gang war before wandering off again to do whatever else he’s going to do. While Sanjuro is not above taking money from both sides of the war as he plays them against each other, his reasons for doing what he does seem to revolve less around greed and more around some sort of altruism. He just happens to make a profit for himself along the way. And while Sanjuro is not gentle or judgmental or anything along those lines, he still comes across as a more benevolent figure than The Man With No Name.
And I’ll just add that I was a little surprised that Sanjuro did not use the steel plate trick despite the fact one of his opponents was carrying a pistol everywhere and not afraid to use it.
That, however, is all I wish to say in comparison between the two films. I haven’t seen A Fistful of Dollars in over 20 years, and this column is about Yojimbo, which is apparently the Japanese word for “bodyguard”. The film opens with the nameless ronin coming up to a small farm in time to see an older farmer try and fail to get his young adult son to stay on the farm. Said son doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life eating gruel and wants the finest food and clothes. Sanjuro overhears, and the conversation isn’t wasted as, at the film’s conclusion, this young man is the only one Sanjuro spares, telling the kid to go home and eat gruel. The ronin travels on, coming to a village where he learns all the young men go to join one of two gangs. One is led by Seibei (Seizaburo Kawazu), the original boss who intends his son to inherit the family business. Said son is less than impressive, causing his top lieutenant Ushitora (Kyū Sazanka) to split off and form his own rival gang with his two brothers, including the pistol-packing Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai). Seibie controls the town’s mayor, a silk merchant, while Ushitora backs a rival mayor, a sake brewer. And while Seibei’s gang is actually being run by his much smarter wife Orin (Isuzu Yamada), the gang war is basically a stalemate. Lots of locals are losing their homes and worse in the gambling den, and violence is an everyday thing.
One skilled samurai like Sanjuro can make all the difference. He seems to recognize it, and confiding only in tavern keeper Gonji (Eijirō Tōno), he decides more or less on the spot to bring both groups down by using the knowledge that both sides will want to hire him against both gangs. And it more or less works out that way. Sanjuro can use simple mind games without having to pull his sword out too often. More often than not, the two groups manage to take themselves out. Seibei’s losing power as his son is clearly not leadership material. As for Ushitora, he might make a better leader for a crime syndicate, but between his brothers, one a psycho and the other a fool, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of good options in case something goes wrong. Besides, these are criminal organizations, and Sanjuro can easily exploit their weaknesses while helping the pawns caught in-between.
That’s most relevant when he makes a move to rescue a woman from sexual slavery. Said woman caught the mayor’s eye, and since her poor husband had excessive gambling debts, the gang not only took his house, they took her too. Sanjuro does rescue the woman and frame the rival gang in the process, but he likewise expresses disgust for the man, and when the couple and their young son can’t take a hint and disappear with the money Sanjuro gave them–money he’d just been paid to protect the boss–he berates them as fools and idiots. Yes, he rescued the woman, but any benefit to the family was less important to him than the result that would happen when the gang returned to find the woman’s “bodyguards” all slaughtered and her missing.
Granted, it’s not much of a film if Sanjuro doesn’t suffer a setback, but even then, he’s managed to make an ally in the local coffinmaker whose business was perhaps a little too good by that point. The only person in the village he seems to care at all about is Gonji. But like any good samurai, Sanjuro is too good to be taken down by the likes of these criminals, and after they’ve thinned their own ranks with their gang war, it’s not too much effort for the man to finish mopping up.
Yojimbo apparently was popular enough that Kurosawa altered his next samurai film’s script to make him the main character in that as well, effectively making it a sequel even if it wasn’t planned that way. Given the nature of Sanjuro’s journey in this film, it’s not hard to see how he could have hit it off. He’s heroic, but not necessarily entirely benevolent. He’ll help people, but he has no time for fools. He’s good with a sword, but his mind is a greater weapon. And like many a Western hero, once his job is done, he can set off and wander some more until he finds more people he believes deserve his help. Will I move on to the sequel Sanjuro? Well, maybe, but not any time soon. I have enough on my plate as it is. Speaking of which…
NEXT: OK, apparently I am hitting a Jimmy Stewart film with every other entry right now, and here’s another one I just didn’t care for that much. I’ll probably have plenty to say on that subject next time when I cover 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
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