Kurosawa admitted in
interviews that this film was, essentially, an
uncredited adaptation of elements from
Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" and "The
Glass Key"; in addition, as so many samurai
films do, it shares many tropes with the
American Western, which made Sergio Leone's
swipe of the swipe, turning "Yojimbo" into
"Fistful of Dollars" all the more logical.
Bits from this film -- the confrontation and
sword fight with the boastful thugs and one of
them losing an arm -- and even more from
another Kurosawa film, "The Hidden Fortress"
-- made up much of the inspiration for the
first "Star Wars" film, as well.
Mifune's wandering ronin is deliberately made
almost the antithesis of the samurai ideal --
scruffy, surly, lazy and so lost to proper
manners that he scratches himself in public --
to point up that it is difficult to judge good
or ill from surface appearance (a point made
even more strongly in the sequel, "Sanjuro").
Arriving in a town that is being destroyed by
the running battles between two gangs of
small-time gamblers and gangsters, the ronin
plays both gangs against each other, hoping to
lead them to destroy each other.
It almost works. And it almost gets him
killed, too.
Kurosawa, like Leone, was a master of the
meaningful silence, the understated gesture --
and the sudden shocking violence that releases
tension gradually built up so quietly we
almost haven't noticed it.
Like most of his films, at the heart of this
one is a meditation on honor and strength and
on what a man owes to himself and to those
around him, and on whether having the ability
to clean up a bad situation compels one to do
it.
Is it true, as Spider-Man says, that "With
Great Power comes Great Responsibility", or is
it unreasonable to ask someone to risk his
neck for a bunch of people he doesn't know,
just because he's The Only Man Who...?
One of these days, i'm going to re-read the
Hammett, then i'm going to rent "Yojimbo" and
"Fistful of Dollars" and "Last Man Standing"
and i am going to watch them all -- in order
-- and then i'm going to reread David Drake's
recent SF novel reworking the same themes,
"The Sharp End"... just as a sort of crash
course in how five masters of narrative tell
the same story and make it theirs.
I must
admit to being a bit cranky about the most
recent subtitles that change one of my
favourite lines {from the subtitles the
theatrical version i first saw back in the
1980s had} to something flat.
In the print i first saw, when Sanjuro goes
out to confront the thugs in the street
(what became the "Apologise to my mule"
scene in "Fistful of Dollars" and Obi-Wan's
barfight), he touched off the fight by
saying "Are you sure you want me to kill
you? It'll hurt, you know."
In the newer titles, he says something
thoroughly unmemorable and not funny.
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