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's Fist 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)."

"Yojimbo is the bet-filmed of any of Kurosawa's pictures (Richie 152)." Kazuo Miyagawa did an excellent job shooting this film by using several different techniques. One would be the use of deep focus. The use of the two dimensional is quite extensive in the film drawing us to two areas of the screen at the same time (Richie 152). This is a comedy film as well. Kurosawa uses low angles in the film to help out with the comedic nature of some of the scenes. One scene that stands out is the scene where Toshiro Mifune's character watches the rival families attempt to destroy each other once and for all. Mifune's character sits atop a bell tower and watches for his enjoyment the hijinks that he created. Miyagawa uses low camera angles on the ground for an added effect, while at the same time using a sort of dietic view as the samurai watches the action. Back to being a comedy, the characters are not exactly the most normal looking creatures on the planet. Mifune, the undertaker, and the bar owner are normal. The evil families are not normal looking at all, physically. Mentally they are not really using their heads through the course of the film. This film did well at the box-office in Japan and started the spaghetti westerns when Sergio Leone remade Yojimbo as Fist Full of Dollars starring Clint Eastwood (Richie 151). After WWII, Italy slowly began to make new films. Most were inexpensive films featuring an American actor and a supporting cast of Italian actors. The quality of the films were not very good and the movie was post-dubbed. The spaghetti western is a western filmed in Italy, usually, with more violence than regular westerns. Spaghetti westerns were usually subscribed to cult status in the US. Fist Full of Dollars was the start of the spaghetti westerns. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is another example of a spaghetti western. Spaghetti westerns are inexpensive and the postdubbing, recording the speaking and sound effects after the film is done, can be distracting and somewhat funny at times with voices and inflection not sounding right at times.

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 headbanging 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

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 in Fist 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 in Fist 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

character. One shot has the street empty with leaves blowing in the autumn wind. Such memorable images were not to be found in Fist Full of Dollars. One scene in particular in Fist Full of Dollars stands out, that being the final showdown with Eastwood and the Rojo brother. Eastwood has know that this brother likes his rifle and always aims for the heart to kill a man. Eastwood takes a precaution and places a metal plate under his clothes. The brother shoots Eastwood several times. We cut from close-ups to wide shots to see Eastwood staggering back and forth on the empty streets in town. This was good editing and good use of shot selection by the editor. We see the frustration and amazement of the brother in close-ups and then cut to see Eastwood staggering from far away.. Sergio Leone is credited with starting the spaghetti western. He went on to make For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Leones''' last effort was a film starring Robert De Niro titled Once Upon A Time in America from 1984(Katz 817). Kurosawa on the other hand has had a more prolific career. He made his directing debut in 1943 with Judo Saga. Some of his more prominent films have been, Throne of Blood, Rashoman, Ikiru, Ran, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo (Mast and Kawin 409-415). Kurosawa has won awards all over the world for his films and recently had Academy Award nomination for Ran. Kurosawa is a true auteur who has edited or closely supervised the editing of nearly all his films and collaborated of the scripts of most. Powerful expressive and highly versatile, a master craftsman and a virtuoso stylist, he ranks among the world's great living directors(Katz 770). Several of his films have been redone by others like Yojimbo, Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven by John Sturges and Rashomon was remade as The Outrage by Martin Ritt (Richie 243). "His samurai films also had a significant effect on another genre: The plot of George Lucas's Star Wars owes as much to Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958) as it does to The Wizard of Oz, and the editing and pace of both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes

Back (1980) were strongly influenced by the editing of Seven Samurai (Mast and Kawin 415)." Kurosawa has also borrowed from others for inspiration on his films. Ran is a reworking of Shakespeare's King Lear and Throne of Blood is a reworking of Macbeth. 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 and Fist 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 than Fist Full of Dollars because Kurosawa had a great cinematographer and a comedic element that does not exit in Fist 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, however Yojimbo 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.

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. (Macmillian Publishing 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