kurosawa and the spaghetti western

8/3/2019 Kurosawa and the Spaghetti Western

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Kurosawa and the Spaghetti Western

Akira Kurosawa is one of the most influential film makers of all time. Kurosawa

is from Japan which could be considered a disadvantage with the likes of Godzilla and

Rodan type movies. Kurosawa has directed several great movies over his career, like

Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood,Roshoman,Ran, and Yojimbo. The object of this paper

is Yojimbo and the similarities and differences in Sergio Leone'sFist Full of Dollars.

Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) is about a samurai with no master that goes from town

to town as a hired sword. Toshiro Mifune plays the nameless samurai. He comes to a

town where two families fight for control of the business in the town. Mifune sees he can

have some fun and make some money using both families for his own purpose. Both

families are bad and so is he. Basically no one in the film is good. Mifune does one kind

act by rescuing a family from one of the evil families. Because of this Mifune gets the

snot beat out of him, but he manages to escape, recover and then get both of the families

killed. Mifune ends up getting the families to destroy each other. Nakadai is a young son

of one of the evil families, he returns to the town brandishing a pistol. Mifune and

Nakadai face off at the end of the film and Mifune out wits Nakadai even though he has

the pistol.

Mifune's character is an anti-hero. An anti-hero is someone that does not fit the

typical stereotype of a hero. Usually a non-desirable person that is inherently bad but

will do something good for the film. Mifune does not have a friendly personality nor

does he have any ambition to change the town for good but just make money and have

fun doing it. A typical hero is one we would want to emulate. Mifune is not honorable,

just, honest or truthful. Heroes are pillars of purity, honor, trusting, and friend to

everyone, the perfect unattainable human. "Yojimbo develops the theme of self-assertion

and individual integrity, the man who can sell his sword but not his values (Mast and

Kawin 415)."


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Fist Full of Dollars is taken from Yojimbo and could almost be considered

plagiarism. Some scenes are almost the same shot composition as Kurosawa's. The

setting is a Mexican boarder town into which a "man with no name" rides. Upon his

arrival he learns that the town is run by two rival families that employ motley cres.

Clint Eastwood, stars as "the man with no name". Eastwood starts off by killing four

men with a lightning fast trigger gaining a place with the Rojos. He is an anti-hero that

has no moral ties that bind him from doing what he wants. Eastwood's character is not

very talkative throughout this film which allows viewers the opportunity to try and get in

his mind. One of the brothers in the Rojos, one of the evil families, is an excellent shot

and the stage is set early on in the film to see if Eastwood can challenge him at

marksmanship. Eastwood's token goodwill act is that of reuniting a family and sending

them on their way. This causes the Rojos to kill the other sinister family but not before

Eastwood is beaten to a pulp. He manages to rest up and heal his wounds before he goes

out to save his bartender friend from the Rojos. In the process of doing so Eastwood

faces the excellent marksman of the Rojo family. Eastwood wins in a unique showdown,

where Eastwood and the brother are out of ammunition and the duel is to see who can

load and shoot the fastest. Eastwood wins.

"The film is full of brilliant spatial relationships (extreme close-ups in the

foreground, with detailed compositions visible in the background, punctuated by head-

banging tight close-ups)...(Nash and Ross 860). Early in the film there is an excellent

close-up of Eastwood's eyes as he watches the action unfolding before him. The end of

the film has a good close-up shot of the brother that Eastwood fights. The sweat on his

face and the fear in his eyes are very noticeable. One thing that made this film popular

was the cold violence portrayed in the film (Nash and Ross 860). People were not just

shot they were killed. For example, the Rojos kill the other family, we see everyone die.

Some are on fire as they escape the burning building, and no mercy for them. A

government convoy comes through the town and are supposed to be buying guns from


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the US, this is a trap and all of the Mexican government men are mowed down by the

Rojos, who set up the faux trade. The violence for the time was more than most films of

that time were used to," the film, noted for its explicit brutality, flamboyant visual style,

and abundant close-ups gave an enormous boost to the then-stagnant career of Clint

Eastwood (Katz 817)."

The storylines are very close. The story is basically the same with the exception

of location and characters, in other words the plot is the same. Both characters enter a

town as nameless mercenaries. Both stories have two families that are in direct

competition with each other. The nameless characters befriend the local bar owners who

inform them on the situation in the town. The nameless characters sell their services to

the controlling families making money from them. Both films share character that has a

special "weapon" i.e. a pistol or marksmanship. The rival families destroy each other in

both films as well. Government visitors come to the town in both as well. A family is

reunited in the two films and both "heroes" pay by having their face pounded. The

movies end as they walk/ride into the sunset.

Many cinematic techniques in Yojimbo are copied inFist Full of Dollars. The

most memorable is that both are locked up when they are beaten. Both escape from their

makeshift cells and to avoid detection crawl underneath walkways. At one point the

captors are looking for the nameless characters and the nameless characters peer through

cracks in the floor to eavesdrop on the conversation concerning their apprehension.

Where Yojimbo was made to be funny, full of funny characters,Fist Full of

Dollars is not. This is probably the biggest contrast the two films share. There is not

anything to laugh about inFist Full of Dollars. Yojimbo had funny looking characters

that acted funny at times as well. Another difference would be the camera. Yojimbo had

the better look and overall has some great camera work. The streets in Yojimbo are

empty and we see this from a distance and yet we are not isolated from Mifune's


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Back(1980) were strongly influenced by the editing ofSeven Samurai (Mast and Kawin

415)."

Kurosawa has also borrowed from others for inspiration on his films. Ran is a

reworking of Shakespeare'sKing Lear and Throne of Bloodis a reworking ofMacbeth.

Kurosawa used Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths(Mast and Kawin 416). Kurosawa

said, "After finishing Rashomon I wanted to do something with Shakespeare's Macbeth,"

calling it, "my favorite Shakespeare (Richie 115)."

Both Yojimbo andFist Full of Dollars are entertaining films but Sergio Leone

could not recreate the same story with the same affect as Kurosawa had done. I like

Yojimbo more thanFist Full of Dollars because Kurosawa had a great cinematographer

and a comedic element that does not exit inFist Full of Dollars. Yojimbo is more

visually interesting to watch and Mifune is a great actor. I think that it is clear that

Kurosawa has had a more lucrative career as well and has had more experience making

films than Leone, and Leone was in all likelihood on a smaller budget than Kurosawa.

Overall both films are good in and of themselves, howeverYojimbo could stand alone as

a very good movie with elements and techniques that are to this day not done with the

same success as Kurosawa.


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Bibliography

Katz, Ephraim; The Film Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (HarperCollins Publishing: 1994)

pp.769-770, 817

Gerald Mast, Bruce F. Kawin; A Short History of the Movies 5th ed. (MacmillianPublishing Company: 1992) pp. 415-418

Jay Robert Nash, Stanley Ralph Ross; The Motion Picture Guide E-G (Cinebooks, Inc.

1986) pp.860

Richie, Donald; The Films of Akira Kurosawa (University of California Press: 1984)pp.115,147-155

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