Influence On Western Cinema
A number of western movies have re-told the samurai movie in a Western context. Italian director Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing are both remakes of Yojimbo. Clint Eastwood's "man with no name character" was modeled to some degree on Mifune's wandering ronin character that appeared in so many of his films. The Hidden Fortress influenced George Lucas when he made Star Wars. Seven Samurai has been remade as a Western and a science fiction context film, The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars. Other samurai influenced western movies include Charles Bronson and Toshirō Mifune in Red Sun (1971), David Mamet's Ronin (with Jean Reno and Robert De Niro), Six-String Samurai (1998) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999). The Zatoichi character was re-made as Blind Fury in the United States, starring Rutger Hauer as a blind swordsman living in the modern US. Most recently, The Last Samurai, the story being loosely based on the true historical French officer Jules Brunet assisting Japanese samurai in rebellion against the Emperor.
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“Compare ... the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)