181 - Yojimbo, 1961, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

Friday, June 30, 2017

181 - Yojimbo, 1961, Japan.  Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

The Man with No Name walks into the dying town.

Two rival gangs are holed up on opposite ends.  Posturing.  And cowering.

The cooper works in the middle building coffins.

A dog trots by holding in his mouth a human hand.

The Man approaches one gang announcing his services.

He walks down the middle of the barren street, the wind blowing dust into the air.

The rival gang has made sport of him, calling him a dog.

He drops three men with one unsheathing of his sword.

He tells the cooper, "I need two coffins.  No, maybe three."

And so begins his stay in the town, where he sets up the two gangs against each other.

And plays them.

Making each raise its price.

Hoping to win his loyalty.

Until all are dead.

And he has all their money.

No.  This is not Clint Eastwood.  It is not A Fistful of Dollars.

This is Toshiro Mifune.  It is Yojimbo.

When Clint, a television actor, was offered his first starring role in a feature film, in Italy, he read the script and knew it immediately.

This is Yojimbo.

It was in the air.

Yojimbo came out in 1961.

Fistful came out in 1964.

The Italian Western took from the Japanese Samurai movie.

The Japanese Samurai movie had already taken from the American Western.

Kurosawa loved American Westerns.

He admired the work of John Ford.

More than one writer says he "worshiped" him.

Kurasawa said of Ford, "When I'm old, that's the kind of director I want to be."

He referred to Ford's 1946 My Darling Clementine as the model of cinema.

Darling was Ford's telling of Wyatt Earp, starring Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, and Walter Brennan.

Kurosawa wrote in his autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography, "Compared to these two illustrious masters, Renoir and Ford, I am no more than a little chick."

Kurosawa may have more masterpieces credited to him than anyone else in the history of world cinema, outside of Ingmar Bergman, yet he honored Ford as the master.

So did others.  Many others.

We will get to Ford later this year.  And we will discuss more of that then.

Kurosawa understands composition.

He uses 90-degree angles.  And straight lines.

Whereas the other great Ku- composition master, Kubrick, reveled in perspective, using largely a single, central vanishing point in his framing, this Ku- composition master, Kurosawa, places his images in flat planes.

He composes his shots in Yojimbo as if we were watching live theatre.

With the characters foregrounded and backgrounded to give depth.

And everything neatly contained in the shot as if between two curtains.

With Akira Kurosawa, all the world's a stage.

The Man with No Name has a name.  Whether it is given to him by someone else or himself.

In a Fistful of Dollars, they call him Joe.

In For a Few Dollars More, they call him Monco.

In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, they call him Blondie.

In Yojimbo, he names himself.  When asked his name he looks out the window and sees a mulberry field.  He is 30-years old, so he names himself the 30-year old mulberry field.

Or in Japanese, Sanjuro Kuwabatake.

Sanjuro.

I wonder if we will see that name again.