Concept and Creation
A Fistful of Dollars was directly adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). It was the subject of a successful lawsuit by Yojimbo's producers. The film's protagonist, an unconventional ronin played by Toshirō Mifune, bears a striking resemblance to Eastwood's character: both are quiet, gruff, eccentric strangers with a strong but unorthodox sense of justice and extraordinary proficiency with a particular weapon (in Mifune's case, a katana; for Eastwood, a revolver).
Like Eastwood's character, Mifune's ronin is nameless. When pressed, he gives the pseudonym Sanjuro Kuwabatake (meaning "Thirty-year-old Mulberry-field"), a reference to his age and something he sees through a window (although regarding the age he jokes 'Closer to forty actually'). The convention of hiding the character's arms from view is shared as well, with Mifune's character typically wearing his arms inside his kimono, leaving the sleeves empty. Prior to signing on to Fistful, Eastwood had seen Kurosawa's film and was impressed by the character. During filming, he did not emulate Mifune's performance beyond what was already in the script. He also insisted on removing some of the dialogue in the original script, making the character more silent and thus adding to his mystery. As the trilogy progressed, the character became even more silent and stoic.
Yojimbo is itself believed to have been based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest. Kurosawa scholar David Desser and film critic Manny Farber, among others, state categorically that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the Kurosawa film Yojimbo. Leone himself clearly believed this theory, stating:
| “ | Kurosawa's Yojimbo was inspired by an American novel of the serie-noire so I was really taking the story back home again." | ” |
Although Kurosawa never publicly credited Hammett, he privately acknowledged Red Harvest as an influence. The lead character in Hammett's Red Harvest is also nameless, identified only as a Continental Op after the detective agency he works for.
A subsequent film, Last Man Standing (1996) starring Bruce Willis, is a credited remake of Yojimbo.
Read more about this topic: Man With No Name
Famous quotes containing the words concept and/or creation:
“The concept of a person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. The concept of a person is not to be analysed as that of an animated body or an embodied anima.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)
“He’s indestructible. Frankenstein’s creation is man’s challenge to the laws of life and death.”
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