Part of Akira Kurosawa: A Retrospective
The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic YOJIMBO. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone and Walter Hill, this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential and entertaining films of all time. Thanks to perhaps the most indelible character in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre, YOJIMBO surpassed even SEVEN SAMURAI in popularity when it was released. The masterless samurai was so entertainingly embodied by the brilliant Toshiro Mifune that it was only a matter of time before he returned in a sequel. Made just one year later, SANJURO (Aug 10, 12) matches YOJIMBO’s storytelling dexterity yet adds a layer of world-weary pragmatism that brings the two films to a thrilling and unforgettable conclusion.
Programmers’ Note: On Tue, Aug 12, you can catch back-to-back screenings of YOJIMBO (2:15pm, 6:40pm) and SANJURO (4:35pm, 9:00pm) in our 1925 Hall. Tickets sold separately.
“He was deliberately combining the samurai story with the Western, so that the wind-swept main street could be in any frontier town, the samurai (Toshiro Mifune) could be a gunslinger, and the local characters could have been lifted from John Ford’s gallery of supporting actors…. Ironic, that having borrowed from the Western, Kurosawa inspired one: Sergio Leone’s A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), with Clint Eastwood, is so similar to YOJIMBO that homage shades into plagiarism.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times “Though possessing neither the Shakespearean sweep of SEVEN SAMURAI, the moral probing of IKIRU, or the narrative audacity of RASHOMON, Akira Kurosawa’s seminal gangster/samurai fable Yojimbo is just as important a landmark in the director’s career — if not for its devilish hybrid of styles, inversion of genre conventions, and sly political commentary, then certainly for sheer entertainment value…. Kurosawa’s tale is sociopolitical wish fulfillment via archetypal samurai drama, albeit with a twist or three.” —Rob Humanick, Slant Magazine
