6/14/23
Newsletter #367
The Crack of Dawn
I’ve been a fan of Akira Kurosawa since I was fourteen. I’m proud to say, in my nerdiest way, I’ve seen damn near all of his movies, including his judo movies, like Sanshiro Sugata (1942), his debut. I have read, and recommend, Kurosawa’s wonderful half-of-an-autobiography, called, Something Like An Autobiography. I am a fan.
Back when I was 14, I was a member of the Detroit Film Theater, located in the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and was the only place you could see old foreign films in Detroit in 1972. Since I was already a rabid film fan, and loved westerns, I was well aware that The Magnificent Seven (1960) was based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), and A Fistful of Dollars (1964) was based on Kurosawa’s film, Yojimbo (1961). So, I was right there at the front of the line when the DFT first showed Yojimbo, with new widescreen 35mm prints. Yojimbo is the perfect Akira Kurosawa movie to start with.
First of all, it was a great choice for a western remake, and Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood had done it proud. But this is where me and the Meta-Moderns diverge, and it may be because of just a couple of years age difference.
Stick with me, I have a point. Even though A Fistful of Dollars was made in 1964, and the sequel, For a Few Dollars More, was made in 1965, they weren’t released in the U.S. until 1967 as a double feature. I came out of that double feature a changed 9-year-old. In my increasing wisdom I now understood a number of things. 1. A Fistful of Dollars, at 100-minutes, and inspired by some Kurosawa guy, was a much better movie than, For a Few Dollars More, which is 132-minutes, and was not based on that Kurosawa guy’s stuff. The two films are distinctly different: one is inspired, and snappy; the other is strictly for the money, and dull. Both, btw, were made on Clint Eastwood’s hiatuses from the TV show, Rawhide. And that’s 2. That Clint Eastwood guy was terrific, he might just have a career.
Under these circumstances, I finally got to see Yojimbo when I was 14, and all the pieces came together. Oh! I see why they wanted to remake this – it’s great, and it has a terrific lead role, played by the magnificent Toshiro Mifune. Of course, the remake, A Fistful of Dollars – a cheap, shot-in-hurry in Italian, then dubbed into English, rip-off – was sort of a piece of crap in comparison. That which I’d held in such high esteem, was in fact the Meta-Modern joke. Thank goodness the Italian director, Sergio Leone, was also a legitimate artist in his own right. But the film is Leone’s homage to Kurosawa. Yojimbo is the masterpiece; A Fistful of Dollars isn’t. Toshiro Mifune is a great actor; Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood.
For instance, Yojimbo begins with the Ronin Samurai Warrior With No Name (Toshiro Mifune) walking away from us. Then Kurosawa allows Toshiro Mifune to give an entire brilliant performance with his back: he hunches it, rolls it, stretches it, tries to scratch it, can’t get to the itch; it’s incredible. Clint didn’t even try ripping that off. Instead, he bought a poncho and some little cigars in Beverly Hills tobacco shop before flying to Rome.
Ergo then, thinkest I, if all of this be true, is not then The Magnificent Seven the joke version of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai? Luckily, that was the next film showing on the Detroit Film Theater’s list. I saw it in a great new print. So, was it true? Yes. The Magnificent Seven was indeed the expensive, Hollywood, goofy, Meta-Modern remake. It’s ultimately like comparing Henry V with Ocean’s 11. Seven Samurai is a deadly serious, incredibly well-made film. John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, with young Steve McQueen trying to steal the movie from old Yul Brynner, is a goofball movie with a great rousing Elmer Bernstein score that was used throughout the 1960s to sell Marlboro cigarettes.
Here's the thing, which for me was never in question, but is really the big question – which one’s better? For me, which one came first? And obviously, to me, Yojimbo is a work of art; and A Fistful of Dollars, as good as it may have turned out in its own silly way, is a rip-off, and ridiculous because of the dubbing. But we’re now at a time when the rip-off is taken more seriously than the original, so something has definitely changed. Kurosawa and Mifune are serious; Sturges, McQueen and Brynner are not.
However, John Sturges, the director of The Magnificent Seven, whom I admire greatly, had a project it in him, that I believe in some sense, set the tone of American cinema, and who it’s stars were, for the 1960s, which is, The Great Escape (1963), with Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, David McCallum, who would be in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (and his co-star, Robert Vaughn, was one of the Magnificent Seven). As I’m thinking about it, I don’t think that I’ve brought up The Great Escape in 367 newsletters . . . yes, I have. It was when I found the script at MGM, while Sheldon Lettich was working on Rambo III. I was hoping to meet Sly, but I didn’t. Still, in a giant pile of scripts about to be thrown out, I found original shooting scripts of The Great Escape and Bull Velvet. I just checked the book and Rambo III was 1988. Thirty-five years ago, when Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Now, however, he sleeps with the fishes.
And there you have it.