Akira
Kurosawa and Sergio Leone are two of the most influential, yet
different directors in cinematic history – but they met on a
crossroads. That crossroads was Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone's
Western that took the world by storm, that was said to be a copy of
Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I decided to watch both back-to-back and have my
say on the matter.
Much
has been made about how Sergio Leone took Kurosawa's story and
characters (most in particular being a rogue from out of town) and
made them into his breakthrough Fistful
of Dollars.
Kurosawa even sued Leone over the story rights. But to those who
wonder whether Yojimbo
is 'better' than Fistful
or vice versa need to remember one of two things: Kurosawa took the
story from Dashiell Hammett's gangster novel Red Harvest (which was
also adapted into The
Maltese Falcon
– go and watch that if you haven't done so already.), so neither
film maker is making something really original; and that since each
film is made in a different continent, and with the slightest
different sensibilities about its characters.
I
think people seem to forget that Yojimbo
was
more or less an homage to the Hollywood Western. Sergio Leone
transposed the screenplay of Yojimbo
to the Spanish desert, and he brought along a young television actor
named Clint Eastwood, and together they revolutionised the western
with Fistful of Dollars,
and created an entire genre – the Spaghetti Western. It wasn’t
much of a stretch to replace the Japanese actors with Americans and
Italians and swap out the katanas for pistols. It’s still the same
dusty town, the same shoot outs on the desolate streets. Whether it’s
cowboys or samurai’s, it all adds up to one excellent cinematic
experience.
There
are enough cultural differences to distinguish both of them and to
make them both enjoyable. For one thing, in Yojimbo
guns are scarcer than in Fistful,
and there's a treatment Kurosawa has with his actors that sets it
apart from the small town western scope of Leone's weapons and
actors.
Yojimbo
is a wonderfully tight-scripted film that uses its action with just
the right touches of voracity and excitement, and in the backdrop is
also a sense of humour to the process. It carries wonderful images,
and skilful direction that keeps the pace of the storytelling tight
and tells most of the story through images – this is the kind of
film that is so good it can be watched a silent film without losing
too much of its impact or meaning.
But
I think it would be hard to argue that Fistful
is not the more stylish of the film. From Eastwood's poncho and hat,
to the final scene, to the iconic music. It sported among its
attributes a gritty, desolate landscape, and a cynical, postmodern
lack-of-values ideology (traditional American westerns had quite
plush landscapes and were always black and white (good and evil) in
their value system. Fistful
made a star of Eastwood Leone and rightly so. The film captured an
audience and a generation. The music is still hummed to this day.
In
other words, it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges picked in
the same farm. They both taste good, but they have two very distinct
different tastes. Everyone is going to have their favourite, but to
dismiss Fistful
because
it is a 'copy' would be dismissing one of the greats of American
Cinema and Yojimbo
is
one of the greatest films of all time, so why can't we have both?
