If you ask film buffs which is Akira Kurosawa's greatest film, most would say Seven Samurai. However, if you ask them which is Kurosawa's most popular film, they would point to Yojimbo, a 1961 film that gave a new definition to the samurai film genre. This entry discusses the Kurosawa film and its two remakes, one of which became a classic in its own right.

Precursors - Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest

Many film critics point to Red Harvest, a pulp novel written by Dashiell Hammett, as one of Yojimbo's major influences. In the novel, Hammett's series character, the unnamed Continental Op, is called into the town of Personville (nicknamed 'Poisonville') to investigate corruption problems. When the man who called him in is murdered, the Op takes action by meeting all the criminal elements of the town and turning them against each other.

Although Red Harvest is certainly an influence on the film script written by Kurosawa along with his writing partner Ryuzo Kikushima, Yojimbo is not an adaptation of the novel. There are enough differences in plot elements and execution to mark Kurosawa's work as an original.

Comparison of Elements in the Three Films

The story script is written by Ryuzo Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa.

Further Notes on Yojimbo

• For the first time in the jidai-geki genre, blood is seen onscreen and realistic sound effects of steel striking flesh and bone are used. This proved to be a huge influence on future samurai films.

• In an early scene, our hero slices an arm off one of his assailants. This scene is echoed by director George Lucas in Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope (1977), when Obi-Wan Kenobi slices off the arm of one of Luke Skywalker's assailants.

• Although Kurosawa included many funny elements in his earlier films, this is his first out-and-out comedy. The make-up of his villain characters is heavily distorted, and their actions while fighting are choreographed for humour.

• The film may also be an answer to charges by Japanese film critics that Kurosawa was too heavily influenced by the films of the West. Much of the film's settings are clichés taken straight out of B-Western films.

• Yojimbo was successful enough to spawn one official sequel. In Kurosawa's next film, Sanjuro (1962), Mifune's Sanjuro character aids a group of inept young samurai as they attempt to rescue an honest magistrate from the clutches of a corrupt police official. There are other films which claim to feature Mifune's Yojimbo character - notably Zatoichi vs Yojimbo (1970) - but due to inferior script work and Mifune's declining physical abilities (he was now in his mid-40s), such films lack the snap of Kurosawa's originals.

Further Notes on A Fistful of Dollars

• Director Sergio Leone never actually got permission to remake Yojimbo, nor did the producers. Shortly after the film was released in Europe, Kurosawa launched a plagiarism suit. The suit was settled a year later, with Kurosawa receiving 15 percent of the movie's worldwide receipts and a minimum of $100,000. To this day, the connection to Kurosawa's film has never been mentioned in film publicity by MGM/United Artists, the film's American distributor.

• The film was so low-budget that actor Clint Eastwood was obliged to buy his own clothing from a second-hand shop in California in order to create the look of The Man With No Name. There was one exception to his wardrobe: Leone provided the poncho from a shop in Spain.

• The film was shot mainly in Spain, to take advantage of the terrain. Very few members of the production crew spoke English. To encourage distribution in North America, Leone had many of the film credits Anglicised; in the original print, for example, he is listed as 'Bob Robertson'.

• As a cost-saving measure, Leone decided to use extreme close-ups of the actors' faces to convey emotion. This became one of Leone's favourite techniques.

• When the film was first broadcast on American television, a new sequence was added by network executives (unknown to either Eastwood or Leone). In this prologue, the Man with No Name (played by a look-a-like) has his prison sentence commuted by the prison warden, provided he cleans up the Mexican village of the film. The prologue was dropped from later releases and broadcasts of the film.

• A Fistful of Dollars was the first of Leone and Eastwood's Dollars Trilogy, featuring the Man with No Name. The other two are For A Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Contrary to some accounts, neither has anything to do with Kurosawa's sequel Sanjuro.

Further Notes on Last Man Standing

• This is an official remake of Yojimbo, with Kikushima and Kurosawa receiving a story credit on the film. The actual screenplay was written by director Walter Hill.

• When New Line Cinema bought the remake rights in 1992, the initial intention was to reset the story in 21st-Century America. Eventually, the story was moved to the 1920s.

• The film is normally decried as an inferior remake, although it does have some supporters. Critics concede that Hill's use of cinematography and lighting are first rate, but he has also been both praised and panned for his stylized use of violence. As the lead actor, Willis attempts to blend a sense of humour into a film-noirish character; unfortunately, the results are uneven; 'John Smith' alternates between a wooden demeanour and a 'wise-guy' attitude.

• An interesting innovation is the use of music by Ry Cooder. When Kurosawa asked Masaru Sato to compose music for Yojimbo, he wanted the main theme to be reminiscent of a bull-dozer. Cooder actually achieves this effect with his electronic, blues-style main theme.

Availability

All three films have been released on DVD. Yojimbo was released by the Criterion Collection. A Fistful of Dollars was released by MGM/UA Home Entertainment, and Last Man Standing was released by New Line Home Entertainment.