EAST MEETS WEST: Part 2—YOJIMBO/A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS

In Yojimbo, Kurosawa goes from borrowing visual cues from Ford and Westerns to straight up using the Western formula.

Toshiro Mifune plays Sanjuro, a wandering ronin who happens upon a village caught between two warring gangs.

Unlike most of the seven samurai, Sanjuro isn’t shown as having much in the way of compassion or honor early on.

In true Western anti-hero fashion, he comes off as morally ambiguous and slightly favors his lesser mercenary qualities. Constantly flipping between each side to make some money, Sanjuro is content at stirring up the hornet’s nest until he meets an innocent family—the only real innocent people in the town—that is being torn apart by the villains they’re forced to live with.

A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone’s unofficial Spaghetti Western remake follows the same narrative path. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name fills in for Mifune’s wandering swordsman. The movie is so close to its original, uncredited source that Kurosawa successfully sued Leone over it.

The anti-heroes on display here are different animals from the ones I’ve encountered so far.

The worst of them no doubt, has been John Wayne’s role in The Searchers, but there were got enough background to sympathize and even understand where his hatred and grey morality came from.

Here, we’ve got too badasses for badassery’s sake.

We can assume a lot from their actions, particularly when it comes time for both Eastwood and Mifune to finally show some compassion and go out on a limb for the victimized family. But beyond that I read both of these as very pulpy interpretations of romantic swordsman and gunslinger. They ride into town on the wind, only open their mouths to say something totally awesome and at the end of the day, with the dust blowing around their feet, they leave a pile of broken bad guys in their wake.

CLICK AND WATCH!

Even the villains are wonderfully eccentric.

In Yojimbo, the influence of Westerns is crystal clear when Unosuke swaggers into town packing a six-shooter. Likewise Ramon, the main baddie in Fistful, makes his debut by popping out of a covered wagon and mowing down a squad of Mexican soldiers with a Gatling gun.

Though their similarities are plentiful, both have their own unique flavor given the backgrounds and cultures of their respective directors.

What was most interesting for me was that while watching these two side by side I got a strong whiff of Tarantino. The over the top villains, the super-cool anti-heroes, the Spaghetti Western vibe that parts of Inglorious Basterds dripped with and a lot of Kill Bill’s swordplay.

It makes sense.

I’ve started to cross into an era of Westerns and film in general that really started to change in terms of visuals and narratives from the way things had been done before, an era that has a more direct, obvious influence on contemporary filmmakers than older films.