on/y two factors: Yojimbo and the ordinary Japanese jidai-geki"6 (emphasis added). In one scene, Max had to rush off alone to take on a rampaging Bullet Farmer. His influence on Western directors ranges from homages and scene recreations to sometimes flat-out remakes. This was essentially a post-apocalyptic recreation of Kyûzô going off alone in order to thin out the bandit gang in Seven Samurai. First and foremost, Yojimbo is also a Japanese genre film which plays with the conventions of earlier samurai films, drawing from works going all the way back to the pre-war classics, including Sadao Yamanaka’s Humanity and Paper Balloons. … They are trickster deities, hard to pin down, playing jokes, unreliable.” (144) We have previously discussed Martinez’s theory on a few occasions, including in this thread. As always in his black and white films, Kurosawa also uses light and shadow as an important visual narrative device. Featuring a heavy dose of over-the-top violence, Django had a number of sequels and remakes, and also influenced the 2007 Japanese film Sukiyaki Western Django by Takashi Miike, whose works often embrace the kind of violence portrayed in Yojimbo. Additionally, despite Kurosawa himself never seemingly having acknowledged it, the story bears strong resemblance also to Hammett’s novel Red Harvest, indeed arguably more so than The Glass Key (see more here). Afterwards, Yojimbo is yours. Yojimbo spawned the three-film "Man With No Name" series that launched Clint Eastwood to stardom. Another direct influence on Lucas, above and beyond the influence of the genre itself, was John Ford’s classic western, The Searchers (1956). For more information, take a look at the DVD and blu-ray sections of this website. RELATED: 10 Best Movies By Black Directors, According To IMDb. So in order to attack their evil and irrationality, and thoroughly mess them up, I brought in the super-samurai played by Mifune. Available on DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. This page is part of Akira Kurosawa info's information section. Who is right? It is a very fine film, but it is my film. Hollywood directors borrowing from other director's signature styles isn't unheard of in the industry and it happens fairly often. Related: Where To Spot John Wayne's Grandson Brendan In Hallmark's Angel & The Badman. They both end up saving the troubled local populace and ending the standoff without much gain. One of its most renowned champions is Yasujiro Ozu, who supplemented traditionalism with a cinematographic style enriched with patience and, to an extent, In the 19 features that he had directed before Yojimbo, Kurosawa had time and time again been concerned with the question of how to live properly and responsibly, both on individual and social levels. Speaking of rain making everything more dramatic, the final entry in The Matrix trilogy is no stranger to this technique. Born 29 years before the Second World War began, the future filmmaker was taught in his early years about how he was a descendent of samurai. Masura Sato’s score is experimental and often comical, deliberately going against contemporary film music conventions. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New HopeLast but not least, Star Wars. The film sort of evolved from there. Even seasoned Hollywood trendsetters such as Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant) are immune to the charms of Kurosawa's films. It arguably helped the Spaghetti Western craze go worldwide when Sergio Leone made an uncredited remake named A Fistful of Dollars* with a taciturn Clint Eastwood. This disappointed Kurosawa who felt that this reaction was exactly the opposite of what his intention with Yojimbo had been. One cannot watch Yojimbo without perceiving the tremendous impact the film had upon the Western genre. Akira Kurosawa's influence on Western films is widely discussed, from big franchise films, like Star Wars: A New Hope, to Quentin Tarantino's movies. Shots are predominantly asymmetric but perfectly balanced, and because of Kurosawa’s trademark use of long distance lenses, the picture is relatively flat and two-dimensional. Yojimbo established such a good standard for storytelling that Hollywood just had to keep recreating it. The shot of the ruffian’s arm on the floor, severed by Ben’s blade, is a reference to a similarly severed arm, filmed in the same way, in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Even audiences that have never watched movies like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, or Yojimbo will be familiar with their influence on western pop culture. However, the similarities with Seven Samurai are certainly there, albeit less refined and with the added bonus of a stellar cast. (Galbraith, page 309). Particularly in Episode IV: A New … "Yojimbo" had a heavy influence on Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western in general, with star Toshiro Mifune as the Clint Eastwood ‘man with no name’ prototype. While Yojimbo is a kick-ass Western, it also deals with the conflicts of a society that is being heavily influenced by outside forces, specifically that of the United States.. An opening card in the movie tells us that the year is 1860 and the Tokugawa regime has come to an end. A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to … It dichotomously pays homage to the genre it so immediately influences. At times almost a shot-by-shot remake, only transported into an old west setting, the film is notorious for having been completely unauthorised. In this case, it's Flik's ant colony needing help from "warriors" against the oppressive grasshoppers. Kurosawa was not the first one to go to Hammett for source materials: his other detective novels were turned into film noir classics like The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man. Instead, he offers a purely cathartic fantasy where the evils of a corrupted society are dealt by a superhuman hero. I was so fed up with the world of Yakuza. Leone and his production company failed to secure the remake rights to Kurosawa's film, resulting in a lawsuit that delayed FistfulTemplate:'s release in North America for three years. He was himself an outsider, a kind of outlaw, which enabled him to act flexibly, if sometimes recklessly. Yojimbo is different in this sense. Case in point is one of his masterpieces, Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem. To begin with Spaghetti Western films, on the film the crew and the cast compose of people who come from different parts of … Yojimbo & Sanjuro (The Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) Thanks to perhaps the most indelible character in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre, Yojimbo surpassed even Seven Samurai in popularity when it was released. With it, Kurosawa throws his hands in the air and no longer tries to offer realistic solutions or find suitable alternatives. This dichotomy had of course already been a recurring theme in most of Kurosawa’s post-war works, with the question “is all change good”, and in terms of post-war Japan, “is all western good”, most prominently posed by the director. Spaghetti Western movies definitely owe a lot to Akira Kurosawa and would not have been the same without his films. Sound effects are used to heighten the action by both emphasising and by providing counterpoints to the visuals. Since Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on the international copyright, you must pay me.” (quoted from Galbraith). The way the camera maps out the town is one of the best examples of Kurosawa’s geographic mastery. Sergio Leone took the plot and characters for his classic Western directly from Kurosawa's Yojimbo without authorization. Eastwood's Man With No Name character notably debuted in the 1964 Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars, which was so blatantly modeled on … Home - News - Information - Discussion, Email Alerts - Facebook - Twitter - Reddit - RSS, Akira Kurosawa info is © 2006-2021 and maintained by Vili Maunula A Fistful of Dollars for the Last Man Standing: Yojimbo and the Postmodern Western by Melody Ayres-Griffiths.. However, out of all the directors that Western movies love to borrow from, Akira Kurosawa stands out as one of the more common. Akira Kurosawa info • The Akira Kurosawa Community While doing so… This compositional pattern changes and evolves as the film progresses, with the screen space gradually opening up. Much like A Fistful of Dollars, Magnificent Seven replaced the samurai with cowboys. It would be settled out of court for an undisc… After all, applying tried and tested formulas for films can make a director shift their focus on the story and in other creative aspects. This is emphasised in the film both visually and with sound design. This is crucial, as geography in Yojimbo is an important metaphor, not least with the placement of the two feuding gangs at the opposite ends of the town and the hero occupying the space in the middle. Even the first draft of A New Hope took so much from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress that it almost read like a straight adaptation. The nameless ronin in Yojimbo is essentially the Mandalorian’s feudal Japanese ancestor, as both warriors are adventurers who are shrouded in mystery and prone to conflict. The film is not only very carefully and often artificially choreographed, but the hero of the film also functions as something like a director who prepares and directs the plot towards his intended total destruction of the town. Last but not least, Star Wars. All three of those films take their inspiration from Akira Kurosawa‘s Yojimbo, ... women in strong roles when Western films had yet ... Influences. Another example is Django Unchained - a revisionist Spaghetti Western movie. Post-war Japan was, of course, undergoing a strong transformation into the economic powerhouse which it is today, but not without the type of problems mentioned earlier. Japanese concerns, but by external Western influence. Following the film’s release, Kurosawa famously wrote to Leone: “Signor Leone, I have just had the chance to see your film. Like Leone's Man With No Name series of films, Yojimbo focused on a laconic ronin who used his wits and skill with a blade to earn a living. He's one of the most widely recognized Japanese directors, and his timeless masterpieces such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Yojimbo have made a lot of Hollywood movies successful. Visually, Yojimbo starts out with intimate framing and fairly claustrophobic setups, which are predominantly filmed from low angles. Another film worth mentioning in connection with Yojimbo is Django (1966), which much like A Fistful of Dollars is a spaghetti western with a storyline similar to that of Yojimbo. Lots of build up, with brief, explosive action sequences. Miyagawa was one of the great Japanese cinematographers, probably best known for his work for Mizoguchi, including in films like Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff. It has been estimated that Kurosawa actually made more money from A Fistful of Dollars than from his own film. Paradoxically, Richie has missed the Western influences upon Sanjuro , while Burch has missed its essential Japaneseness. Kurosawa had been especially critical about the rampant financial and moral corruption that he saw around him, with many of his post war films dealing with the dark underworld of contemporary Japan. He attacks, and the music crashes to life in his wake, with the thumping, invigorating main theme that underlies many of the action sequences. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. NEXT: Japan’s 10 Best Samurai Films Of All Time, Ranked On Rotten Tomatoes. Where its Akira Kurosawa influences are noticeable is in the camera tricks and framing, utilizing mostly either wide or up-close personal shots and mostly static action. With Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yôko Tsukasa. Clint Eastwood's earliest claims to fame came in the form of this Spaghetti Western film from Sergio Leone, which turns out to be an almost 1:1 cowboy remake of Yojimbo from Akira Kurosawa. The 'spaghetti Western' influences are blatant, & the characters enjoyably over-acted. It's about a father who suddenly has to face terminal cancer and wants to make his final days more meaningful, which is pretty much the same premise as Biutiful. Influence: The Hidden Fortress (1958) Last Man Standing (1996) This mid 1990’s offering by Walter Hill is a different take on Kurosawa’s masterpiece Yojimbo (1961). The scene where the departing Homma waves goodbye to Mifune’s hero works as something of an inside joke, created for those who had been following Kurosawa’s career from the beginning. The views expressed by visitors are their own, Akira Kurosawa news, information & discussion, Bill Nighy to Star in Ikiru Remake from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Script, Missing Kurosawa Films Finally Available on DVD, The New Rashomon Based TV Series Coming to HBO Max, Rashomon turns 70, Stephen Prince discusses the film, Video Game ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ Comes With an Official “Kurosawa Mode”. He wanted to show how artificial samurai films usually were, and how gruesome and horrifying killing someone can actually be. Released in April 1961, only a little over half a year after The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo can be seen as something of a change of gear for Kurosawa and the summation of ideas that he had begun to consider in his preceding films. Meanwhile, D.P. The film was very influential also outside of Japan, where its violence was similarly embraced. This can be seen as a good example of a postmodern cross-cultural cycle of influence, as we move from the west (John Ford and Dashiel Hammett) to the east (Yojimbo) back to west (A Fistful of Dollars and Django), then again east (Sukiyaki Western Django), and now once again to the west (Django Unchained). Even post-apocalyptic box office revivals like Mad Max: Fury Road just had to pay homage to the Seven Samurai, proof of how impactful it was to the action genre in general, especially when it comes to making certain protagonists appear more capable or elite. The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (I sette magnifici gladiatori, 1983) Miike’s film co-starred Quentin Tarantino, who as we have discussed in turn recently released a film titled Django Unchained (2012), another permutation of the themes and styles originating in Yojimbo. Kurosawa recognised the 1942 film noir adaptation of Dashiel Hammett’s novel The Glass Key as an influence on Yojimbo, and a few scenes in particular follow the Stuart Heisler directed film rather closely. Less visually but no less straightforwardly, the theme of inevitable change is a part of the world in which the film is set, namely the 1860s, or the early Meiji period. It essentially trades off the samurai/cowboy for the jazzy American gangster. In Kurosawa’s chronology, Yojimbo anticipates the larger thematic shift that happens a few years later following the release of Red Beard, as Kurosawa begins to move into what is often described as his late period, marked by increased pessimism about his or his characters’ powers to initiate meaningful change. Western Influence. Fire is fought with fire. Akira Kurosawa got much of his inspiration from Hollywood director John Ford and the western pictures popular from the ‘30s through the ‘60s. Yojimbo means bouncer or bodyguard in Japanese. Therefore, Kurosawa had the opportunity of growing up watching films. This time around, the influence comes from one of Kurosawa's lesser-known movies, Ikuru. (Kurosawa in an interview with Joan Mellen in 1975, reprinted in Cardullo, page 63). This piece of new technology threatens traditional values, so much so that even the superhuman hero is afraid of it. Both in Japan and the West, Yojimbohas had a considerable influence on various forms of entertainment. The climactic scene in The Two Towers, the Battle of Helms Deep, owes a lot to how Kurosawa handled Seven Samurai's final battle. He points out that “Westerns have been made over and over again, and in the process a kind of grammar has evolved” and that he has “learned from this grammar of the Western” (Frayling 122). The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. However, Kurosawa’s father was understanding of the fact they were born an era where it would be hard to ignore the western influence. In Yojimbo, the theme of foreign influences is most visibly displayed in the duel between Mifune’s sword fielding superhero and his antagonist, the gun slinging samurai portrayed by Tatsuya Nakadai. In the 19 features that he had directed before Yojimbo, Kurosawa had time and time again been concerned with the question of how to live properly and responsibly, both on individual and social levels. Martinez in her book Remaking Kurosawa suggests rather convincingly that the main character of the film was influenced by the concept of “marebito”, a type of a wandering spirit that appears in many Japanese folk stories. RELATED: 10 Best Final Films from Directors. Another aspect often discussed in connection with Yojimbo is its theatricality. The film that immediately preceded Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well, had gone as far as to practically directly accuse the government of corruption. One of the early influences on both Star Wars and Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. A one-stop shop for all things video games. It is fascinating and a testament to the universality of movies that Yojimbo, which was influenced by westerns, would later have copious influences on films worldwide. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is no exception, and while it has its own source material, it still gazed at films like Seven Samurai for its cinematic flair. The Bruce Willis vehicle moves the story to a western setting with a mercenary getting caught between the conflict of … Here are 10 of the most notable films that have that Kurosawa influence. I think Yojimbo is probably a better representation of his work. RELATED: 10 Best Debut Films From Directors. Kurosawa's samurai showdown structure and lawless provincial backdrops pretty much made Western adaptations a low-hanging fruit. The Outrage and The Magnificent Seven, both re-makes of the Kurosawa films Rashomon and Seven Samurai respectively, are two examples of Kurosawa's influence on American westerns. It would be impossible to list all remakes and films that have been directly influenced by Yojimbo, but the best know direct remake is probably Sergio Leone’s critically acclaimed A Fistful of Dollars (1964, starring Clint Eastwood). This was the time period that the American Commodore Perry came to Japan and forced them to begin trading with the … All the latest gaming news, game reviews and trailers. He is a lone Samurai, smart and feral. Even that said, I kind of feel like Kurosawa is a tad over rated. He admits, however, that the influence for his films, specifically Yojimbo, was born “out of a love for the Hollywood Western” (Frayling 122). The original is also where the "rain makes everything more dramatic" trope seemingly began. Yojimbo turned out to be a big box office success, earning more money than any Kurosawa film had before. Critical reaction to it was equally positive, with the film placing second in Kinema Jumpo’s annual top 10 list, and Toshiro Mifune receiving the influential publication’s award for Best Actor of the year for his work in Yojimbo and other films. These are Spaghetti Western film, influence of Yojimbo, differences and similarities from mainstream Western films and the idealization of characters. Outside of being a writer for Screen Rant, he also works as a journalist and has risked his life for mere warzone photos. In Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), a roaming samurai arrives in a small town where competing gangsters make money from gambling (Richie; p147; 1998).He convinces each crime head to hire him for protection from their rival, and then plays them off against each other leading to … Much like Yojimbo's nameless hero "Sanjuro," Clint Eastwood's character is a random unconventional antihero who initially went out to make a profit by playing both sides of two warring factions. Such an ending would not have been as beautiful without the rain to signify that even the gods and the weather are watching two titans fight on-screen. Yet, if we were to describe Yojimbo solely as a Hammett adaptation with John Ford influences, we would be missing a great deal. It's worth watching Sergio Leone's unofficial Western remake of Yojimbo - A Fistful of Dollars - for comparisons. The similarities are stunning. Leone was, as Prince noted, “very struck by the Western parallels in Yojimbo, and adapted that to a European framework. Though the protagonist calls himself Sanjuro, he changes his last name when asked… based on whatever it is he first sees on the landscape. Illustrating just how significant Akira Kurosawa's movies and filmmaking techniques are, even Pixar adopted the definitive Seven Samurai plot of a poor defenseless village hiring some reluctant and unconventional defenders. Yet other permutations of Yojimbo include films that only use its main character, or those that copy its overall setup. Actually, both men are wrong in that they … Even Quentin Tarantino acknowledges Kurosawa's techniques and his films, like The Hateful Eight, are a good example. Impressively enough, he manages to kill a whole squad. For the full content list, click here. This will also give you two Teleport-spheres, but has no influence on his behaviour. Unsurprisingly, plenty of big films which have borrowed from Kurosawa's marvels have done well either critically or commercially. The name itself is indicative enough - The Magnificent Seven from 2016 is a loose remake of the 1960's classic, The Magnificent Seven, which was a Western remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Only such a samurai of the imagination much more powerful than a real samurai, could mess up these gangsters. Released in April 1961, only a little over half a year after The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo can be seen as something of a change of gear for Kurosawa and the summation of ideas that he had begun to consider in his preceding films. This Akira Kurosawa filmography page was last updated on November 1st, 2019. Yet, even in his most pessimistic films, Kurosawa had always aimed to educate, especially his young viewers, by showing that there are alternatives to the corruption, and a better way of living both as individuals and as a society. 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