In one scene, Max had to rush off alone to take on a rampaging Bullet Farmer. And then, the Yojimbo smiles. Another example is Django Unchained - a revisionist Spaghetti Western movie. They both end up saving the troubled local populace and ending the standoff without much gain. 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). According to one source, during the filming, Leone was "slaving over a moviola machine and copying Yojimbo, changing only the setting and details of the dialogue." 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). Kurosawa was the filmmaker behind Seven Samurai, which served as the basis for the 1960 American Western, The Magnificent Seven. The more obvious of these influences included classical works of Western literature, which Kurosawa reimagined in a Japanese idiom, including Macbeth (Throne of Blood) and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (also called The Idiot). For the full content list, click here. 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. Yojimbo's moves Yojimbo cannot be controlled like all other summons. Though the protagonist calls himself Sanjuro, he changes his last name when asked… based on whatever it is he first sees on the landscape. Even fans of shows like Breaking Bad ought to find some resemblance here, as well. The climactic scene in The Two Towers, the Battle of Helms Deep, owes a lot to how Kurosawa handled Seven Samurai's final battle. Only such a samurai of the imagination much more powerful than a real samurai, could mess up these gangsters. Impressively enough, he manages to kill a whole squad. The way the camera maps out the town is one of the best examples of Kurosawa’s geographic mastery. He attacks, and the music crashes to life in his wake, with the thumping, invigorating main theme that underlies many of the action sequences. Therefore, Kurosawa had the opportunity of growing up watching films. Kurosawa's samurai showdown structure and lawless provincial backdrops pretty much made Western adaptations a low-hanging fruit. Yojimbo spawned the three-film "Man With No Name" series that launched Clint Eastwood to stardom. This Akira Kurosawa filmography page was last updated on November 1st, 2019. 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. At least, until his antagonist appears in town and complicates issues. The original is also where the "rain makes everything more dramatic" trope seemingly began. Instead of being able to choose which action to perform, one can only either give him money and let him "do his thing", or dismiss him. So in order to attack their evil and irrationality, and thoroughly mess them up, I brought in the super-samurai played by Mifune. 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. 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. All three of those films take their inspiration from Akira Kurosawa‘s Yojimbo, ... women in strong roles when Western films had yet ... Influences. To begin with Spaghetti Western films, on the film the crew and the cast compose of people who come from different parts of … The character was created for the film Yojimbo (1961), an unofficial adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest, directed by Akira Kurusawa).Korusawa never admitted publicly that his film was an adaptation of the novel, but acknowledged that he was familiar with Hammett’s work, and was indebted to him as a story-teller. This disappointed Kurosawa who felt that this reaction was exactly the opposite of what his intention with Yojimbo had been. Spaghetti Western movies definitely owe a lot to Akira Kurosawa and would not have been the same without his films. Both in Japan and the West, Yojimbohas had a considerable influence on various forms of entertainment. With Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yôko Tsukasa. … 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. 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. Akira Kurosawa got much of his inspiration from Hollywood director John Ford and the western pictures popular from the ‘30s through the ‘60s. 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. Particularly in Episode IV: A New … Martinez writes: “Marebito are mysterious strangers who appear in a town or village and who must be treated carefully, they bring blessings if they are treated well – giving them food and drink in the main – but can destroy a person or place if treated badly. 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. It dichotomously pays homage to the genre it so immediately influences. Western Influence. Related: Where To Spot John Wayne's Grandson Brendan In Hallmark's Angel & The Badman. 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. Hollywood directors borrowing from other director's signature styles isn't unheard of in the industry and it happens fairly often. This will also give you two Teleport-spheres, but has no influence on his behaviour. Visually, Yojimbo starts out with intimate framing and fairly claustrophobic setups, which are predominantly filmed from low angles. It is a very fine film, but it is my film. Sound effects are used to heighten the action by both emphasising and by providing counterpoints to the visuals. Even Eastwood's Man With No Name is inspired, perhaps, by the samurai in "Yojimbo." 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. A Fistful of Dollars for the Last Man Standing: Yojimbo and the Postmodern Western by Melody Ayres-Griffiths.. However, Kurosawa’s father was understanding of the fact they were born an era where it would be hard to ignore the western influence. 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. Yojimbo is different in this sense. In Yojimbo, almost everyone’s actions are questionable. In 1996, several decades after A Fistful of Dollars, out came Last Man Standing, featuring Bruce Willis in a Prohibition-era America. The similarities are stunning. The final draft retained some of these original elements, such as a princess escaping war and two unlikely heroes helping her. Seven Samurai remains one of my favorite films of all time. It's worth watching Sergio Leone's unofficial Western remake of Yojimbo - A Fistful of Dollars - for comparisons. 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 … For Kurosawa, he had previously been responsible for the unique and at times ground-breaking cinematography of the director’s international breakthrough, Rashomon. Although a period film, and one possibly influenced by folk tales, the broad themes found in Yojimbo are in fact fairly contemporary. 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. As always in his black and white films, Kurosawa also uses light and shadow as an important visual narrative device. The visuals make it very easy for us to spatially understand how places and people are geographically related to one another. With Yojimbo, Kurosawa specifically set out to push boundaries, introducing a type of realistic violence that had not been seen before. A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to … 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. Japanese concerns, but by external Western influence. (Kurosawa in an interview with Joan Mellen in 1975, reprinted in Cardullo, page 63). This compositional pattern changes and evolves as the film progresses, with the screen space gradually opening up. The theme of replacing the old with the new is also present on a level more personal for Kurosawa. Akira Kurosawa info • The Akira Kurosawa Community The movie was essentially a Western remake of the 1961 Japanese samurai film Yojimbo, directed by Akira Kurosawa. Leone was, as Prince noted, “very struck by the Western parallels in Yojimbo, and adapted that to a European framework. Outside of being a writer for Screen Rant, he also works as a journalist and has risked his life for mere warzone photos. Available on DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. 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. The 'spaghetti Western' influences are blatant, & the characters enjoyably over-acted. 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. Speaking of rain making everything more dramatic, the final entry in The Matrix trilogy is no stranger to this technique. We are looking forward to the next Asian permutation of the cycle. Even that said, I kind of feel like Kurosawa is a tad over rated. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Since Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on the international copyright, you must pay me.” (quoted from Galbraith). Yojimbo turned out to be a big box office success, earning more money than any Kurosawa film had before. Another aspect often discussed in connection with Yojimbo is its theatricality. Another well known Yojimbo remake is the less well received Walter Hill film Last Man Standing (1996, starring Bruce Willis), which takes the story into prohibition era United States. Traditionalism, as a brand of rhetoric, eventually found a home in some Japanese film. You can see its influence on many western films to this day. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New HopeLast but not least, Star Wars. He is well-versed in multiple fandoms that gravitate toward the edgy and nihilistic spectrum of the internet culture. 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 Yojimbo, the town’s problems are the result of a conflict between two competing corrupted commercial interests, and the only offered solution is the destruction of that world. "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. 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. Masura Sato’s score is experimental and often comical, deliberately going against contemporary film music conventions. Even more so, the film was a major influence on other filmmakers, immediately ushering in a new era of ultra-violent samurai films. He was himself an outsider, a kind of outlaw, which enabled him to act flexibly, if sometimes recklessly. on/y two factors: Yojimbo and the ordinary Japanese jidai-geki"6 (emphasis added). While doing so… 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. 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In addition to its visual style, Yojimbo is notable also for its soundtrack and sound design. 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. In this case, it's Flik's ant colony needing help from "warriors" against the oppressive grasshoppers. Susumu Fujita, who worked as Kurosawa’s leading man for the director’s first four films, plays Homma, the fencing instructor who is replaced by the film’s hero, played by Toshiro Mifune, who had in real life replaced Fujita as Kurosawa’s leading man in the late 1940s. 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. Here are 10 of the most notable films that have that Kurosawa influence. Both in Japan and the West, Yojimbo has had an influence on various forms of entertainment. Sid Natividad likes movies so much as to choose the risk of urinary tract infection than miss a few minutes of post-credit Easter eggs, that shows the extent of his dedication. 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. Afterwards, Yojimbo is yours. Fire is fought with fire. RELATED: 10 Best Final Films from Directors. I think Yojimbo is probably a better representation of his work. Much like A Fistful of Dollars, Magnificent Seven replaced the samurai with cowboys. He admits, however, that the influence for his films, specifically Yojimbo, was born “out of a love for the Hollywood Western” (Frayling 122). The Bruce Willis vehicle moves the story to a western setting with a mercenary getting caught between the conflict of … The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (I sette magnifici gladiatori, 1983) 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. Paradoxically, Richie has missed the Western influences upon Sanjuro , while Burch has missed its essential Japaneseness. Instead, he offers a purely cathartic fantasy where the evils of a corrupted society are dealt by a superhuman hero. 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. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. This was a time when Japan began to go through a significant change as a nation, opening up its borders and for the first time in hundreds of years accepting foreign, and especially western, influences. This was the time period that the American Commodore Perry came to Japan and forced them to begin trading with the … 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 Quentin Tarantino acknowledges Kurosawa's techniques and his films, like The Hateful Eight, are a good example. One cannot watch Yojimbo without perceiving the tremendous impact the film had upon the Western genre. 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. For an English speaking viewer, the home video availability of the film is fairly excellent. 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. 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. He had tried to show the ugliness of violence, but had perhaps misjudged and made it look cool and stylish. Yet, according to both Miyagawa and Saito, the shots used in the final cut of Yojimbo are in fact predominantly assistant cameraman Saito’s, whom Kurosawa gave near total freedom to find interesting and unexpected ways to shoot the action (see for instance Galbraith, page 308). NEXT: Japan’s 10 Best Samurai Films Of All Time, Ranked On Rotten Tomatoes. A rather poorly received fantasy / science fiction film that bears some influence from Yojimbo. 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”. The film that immediately preceded Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well, had gone as far as to practically directly accuse the government of corruption. 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. 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. 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