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155-410: The series has become known for establishing the spaghetti western genre, and inspiring the creation of many more spaghetti western films. The three films are consistently listed among the best-rated western films in history. The three films came to be considered a trilogy following the exploits of the same so-called " Man with No Name ", portrayed by Clint Eastwood . The " Man with No Name " concept

310-561: A "mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways, wilderness, and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, which is often dispensed through a shootout or quick draw duel. The Western genre sometimes portrays

465-522: A Japanese context. Kurosawa instructed his leading actress, Isuzu Yamada , to regard the work as if it were a cinematic version of a Japanese rather than a European literary classic. Given Kurosawa's appreciation of traditional Japanese stage acting, the acting of the players, particularly Yamada, draws heavily on the stylized techniques of the Noh theater. It was filmed in 1956 and released in January 1957 to

620-427: A big hit, quickly making back the money invested in it and providing the studio with a product that they could, and did, market internationally—though with extensive edits. Over time—and with the theatrical and home video releases of the uncut version—its reputation has steadily grown. It is now regarded by some commentators as the greatest Japanese film ever made, and in 1999, a poll of Japanese film critics also voted it

775-451: A boom period of high-speed growth and rising standards of living. Out of step with the prevailing mood of the era, Kurosawa's films questioned the possibility of redemption through personal responsibility, particularly in Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths . He recognized this, and deliberately aimed for a more light-hearted and entertaining film for his next production while switching to

930-423: A brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of

1085-529: A call to take the follow-up exams, and director Kajirō Yamamoto , who was among the examiners, took a liking to Kurosawa and insisted that the studio hire him. The 25-year-old Kurosawa joined P.C.L. in February 1936. During his five years as an assistant director, Kurosawa worked under numerous directors, but by far the most important figure in his development was Yamamoto. Of his 24 films as A.D. , he worked on 17 under Yamamoto, many of them comedies featuring

1240-558: A contemporary play by Kazuo Kikuta and, together with Taniguchi, adapted it for the screen. The Quiet Duel starred Toshiro Mifune as an idealistic young doctor struggling with syphilis , a deliberate attempt by Kurosawa to break the actor away from being typecast as gangsters. Released in March 1949, it was a box office success, but is generally considered one of the director's lesser achievements. His second film of 1949, also produced by Film Art Association and released by Shintoho ,

1395-480: A costume designer. Shortly before his marriage, Kurosawa was pressured by the studio against his will to direct a sequel to his debut film. The often blatantly propagandistic Sanshiro Sugata Part II , which premiered in May 1945, is generally considered one of his weakest pictures. Kurosawa decided to write the script for a film that would be both censor-friendly and less expensive to produce. The Men Who Tread on

1550-486: A critical and commercial success. Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered lost. He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers in The Most Beautiful , a propaganda film which he shot in a semi-documentary style in early 1944. To elicit realistic performances from his actresses, the director had them live in

1705-404: A duel begins. After the duel, Blondie takes his half of the money, leaving Tuco in a noose, balancing on an unstable grave stone. Blondie rides into the distance as Tuco curses him. After Tuco nearly hangs himself, Blondie frees him from a distance using his rifle. A Fistful of Dollars is an unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa 's 1961 film Yojimbo starring Toshiro Mifune , which resulted in

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1860-602: A gangster ( yakuza ) with tuberculosis , it was also the first time that Kurosawa directed Mifune, who went on to play major roles in all but one of the director's next 16 films (the exception being Ikiru ). While Mifune was not cast as the protagonist in Drunken Angel , his explosive performance as the gangster so dominates the drama that he shifted the focus from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura , who had already appeared in several Kurosawa movies. However, Kurosawa did not want to smother

2015-509: A lucrative sideline lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became famous. In the two years following the release of Horse in 1941, Kurosawa searched for a story he could use to launch his directing career. Towards the end of 1942, about a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , novelist Tsuneo Tomita published his Musashi Miyamoto -inspired judo novel, Sanshiro Sugata , the advertisements for which intrigued Kurosawa. He bought

2170-416: A name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter, moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable. With Heigo's guidance, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances, while exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of

2325-523: A new series titled The Good, The Bad and The Ugly . Despite its title, the new series was not an adaptation of the film. After releasing eight issues, Dynamite abandoned the series. The films had various VHS releases in Italy and in other countries, including some editions boxed together with Leone's other spaghetti western films ( Once Upon a Time in the West and Duck, You Sucker! ). The 1999 DVD, plus

2480-481: A number of occasions, famous examples being Support Your Local Sheriff! , Cat Ballou , Mel Brooks 's Blazing Saddles , and Rustler's Rhapsody . George Lucas 's Star Wars films use many elements of a Western, and Lucas has said he intended for Star Wars to revitalize cinematic mythology, a part the Western once held. The Jedi , who take their name from Jidaigeki , are modeled after samurai, showing

2635-475: A play by Maxim Gorky , taking place in May and June 1957. In contrast to the Shakespearean sweep of Throne of Blood , The Lower Depths was shot on only two confined sets, in order to emphasize the restricted nature of the characters' lives. Though faithful to the play, this adaptation of Russian material to a completely Japanese setting—in this case, the late Edo period —unlike his earlier The Idiot ,

2790-516: A poor farming village in Sengoku period Japan that hires a group of samurai to defend it against an impending attack by bandits, was given a full epic treatment, with a huge cast (largely consisting of veterans of previous Kurosawa productions) and meticulously detailed action, stretching out to almost three-and-a-half hours of screen time. Three months were spent in pre-production and a month in rehearsals. Shooting took up 148 days spread over almost

2945-452: A popular art form. Western films commonly feature protagonists such as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, who are often depicted as seminomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas , spurs, and buckskins , use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival and as a means to settle disputes using frontier justice. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds. The first films that belong to

3100-418: A real factory during the shoot, eat the factory food and call each other by their character names. He would use similar methods with his performers throughout his career. During production, the actress playing the leader of the factory workers, Yōko Yaguchi , was chosen by her colleagues to present their demands to the director. She and Kurosawa were constantly at odds, and it was through these arguments that

3255-554: A result, began to win festival prizes and commercial release in the West were Kenji Mizoguchi ( The Life of Oharu , Ugetsu , Sansho the Bailiff ) and, somewhat later, Yasujirō Ozu ( Tokyo Story , An Autumn Afternoon )—artists highly respected in Japan but, before this period, almost totally unknown in the West. Kurosawa's growing reputation among Western audiences in the 1950s would make Western audiences more sympathetic to

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3410-415: A retreat from the artist's previous commitment to social and political change. The film marked something of an end of an era for its creator. The director himself recognized this at the time of its release, telling critic Donald Richie that a cycle of some kind had just come to an end and that his future films and production methods would be different. His prediction proved quite accurate. Beginning in

3565-482: A samurai clan is portrayed with strongly comic undertones. The film opened on January 1, 1962, quickly surpassing Yojimbo ' s box office success and garnering positive reviews. Kurosawa had meanwhile instructed Toho to purchase the film rights to King's Ransom , a novel about a kidnapping written by American author and screenwriter Evan Hunter , under his pseudonym of Ed McBain, as one of his 87th Precinct series of crime books. The director intended to create

3720-413: A script by Kurosawa's nephew Mike Inoue, is a revenge drama about a young man who is able to infiltrate the hierarchy of a corrupt Japanese company with the intention of exposing the men responsible for his father's death. Its theme proved topical: while the film was in production, the massive Anpo protests were held against the new U.S.–Japan Security treaty , which was seen by many Japanese, particularly

3875-411: A sequel. Kurosawa turned to a script he had written before Yojimbo , reworking it to include the hero of his previous film. Sanjuro was the first of three Kurosawa films to be adapted from the work of the writer Shūgorō Yamamoto (the others would be Red Beard and Dodeskaden ). It is lighter in tone and closer to a conventional period film than Yojimbo , though its story of a power struggle within

4030-570: A setting, where it tasked players to lead a party of settlers moving westward in a covered wagon from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon. The game only grew popular in the 1980s and 1990s as an educational game. The first video game Westerns to engage the mass public arrived in arcade games focused on the gunfighter in Westerns based on depictions in television shows, films and Electro-mechanical games such as Dale Six Shooter (1950), and Sega 's Gun Fight (1970). The first of these games

4185-688: A sheriff in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming . Originally aired on the A&;E network from 2012 to 2014, it was picked up by Netflix in 2015 until the show's conclusion in 2017. AMC and Vince Gilligan's critically acclaimed Breaking Bad is a much more modern take on the Western genre. Set in New Mexico from 2008 through 2013, it follows Walter White ( Bryan Cranston ), a chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage III Lung Cancer who cooks and sells crystal meth to provide money for his family after he dies, while slowly growing further and further into

4340-406: A slightly less negative domestic response than had been the case with the director's previous film. Abroad, Throne of Blood , regardless of the liberties it takes with its source material, quickly earned a place among the most celebrated Shakespeare adaptations. Another adaptation of a classic European theatrical work followed almost immediately, with production of The Lower Depths , based on

4495-738: A subtitled print of the film in Los Angeles, RKO purchased distribution rights to Rashomon in the United States. The company was taking a considerable gamble. It had put out only one prior subtitled film in the American market, and the only previous Japanese talkie commercially released in New York had been Mikio Naruse's comedy, Wife! Be Like a Rose! , in 1937: a critical and box-office flop. However, Rashomon ' s commercial run, greatly helped by strong reviews from critics and even

4650-433: A successful lawsuit by Toho . The actors who appear in all three films are Eastwood, Mario Brega , Aldo Sambrell , Benito Stefanelli and Lorenzo Robledo . Four actors appear twice in the trilogy, playing different characters: Lee Van Cleef , Gian Maria Volonté , Luigi Pistilli , and Joseph Egger . Composer Ennio Morricone provided the original music score for all three films, although in A Fistful of Dollars he

4805-407: A work condemning kidnapping, which he considered one of the very worst crimes. The suspense film, titled High and Low , was shot during the latter half of 1962 and released in March 1963. It broke Kurosawa's box office record (the third film in a row to do so), became the highest grossing Japanese film of the year, and won glowing reviews. However, his triumph was somewhat tarnished when, ironically,

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4960-724: A year (after five months of pre-production), and wrapped in spring 1965, leaving the director, his crew and his actors exhausted. Red Beard premiered in April 1965, becoming the year's highest-grossing Japanese production and the third (and last) Kurosawa film to top the prestigious Kinema Jumpo yearly critics poll. It remains one of Kurosawa's best-known and most-loved works in his native country. Outside Japan, critics have been much more divided. Most commentators concede its technical merits and some praise it as among Kurosawa's best, while others insist that it lacks complexity and genuine narrative power, with still others claiming that it represents

5115-429: A year, interrupted by production and financing troubles and Kurosawa's health problems. The film finally opened in April 1954, half a year behind its original release date and about three times over budget, making it at the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made. (However, by Hollywood standards, it was a quite modestly budgeted production, even for that time.) The film received positive critical reaction and became

5270-589: Is a genre of literature set in the American Old West, most commonly between 1860 and 1900. The first critically recognized Western was The Virginian (1902) by Owen Wister . Other well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey , from the early 1900s, Ernest Haycox , Luke Short , and Louis L'Amour , from the mid 20th century. Many writers better known in other genres, such as Leigh Brackett , Elmore Leonard , and Larry McMurtry , have also written Western novels. The genre's popularity peaked in

5425-461: Is a period film, set in a mid-nineteenth century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's humanist themes receive perhaps their fullest statement. A conceited and materialistic, foreign-trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide, known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and courage and to perceive

5580-512: Is a series of seven books that meshes themes of Westerns, high fantasy , science fiction, and horror. The protagonist Roland Deschain is a gunslinger whose image and personality are largely inspired by the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's films. In addition, the superhero fantasy genre has been described as having been derived from the cowboy hero, only powered up to omnipotence in a primarily urban setting. The Western genre has been parodied on

5735-443: Is a war film, but its action and characters are Western-like. The character played by Humphrey Bogart in noir films such as Casablanca and To Have and Have Not —an individual bound only by his own private code of honor—has a lot in common with the classic Western hero. In turn, the Western has also explored noir elements, as with films such as Colorado Territory and Pursued . In many of Robert A. Heinlein 's books,

5890-413: Is maintained predominantly through relatively impersonal institutions such as courtrooms . The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a seminomadic wanderer, usually a cowboy or a gunfighter. A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered

6045-757: Is the place to go for music (raucous piano playing), women (often prostitutes ), gambling (draw poker or five-card stud), drinking ( beer , whiskey , or tequila if set in Mexico), brawling, and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank, and a school; in others, where frontier rules still hold sway, it is, as Sergio Leone said, "where life has no value". Author and screenwriter Frank Gruber identified seven basic plots for Westerns: Gruber said that good writers used dialogue and plot development to develop these basic plots into believable stories. The American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in

6200-637: Is the safety of a farm in Brazil. Production went much more smoothly than the director's previous film, but a few days before shooting ended, Kurosawa's composer, collaborator, and close friend Fumio Hayasaka died (of tuberculosis) at the age of 41. The film's score was finished by Hayasaka's student, Masaru Sato , who would go on to score all of Kurosawa's next eight films. I Live in Fear opened in November 1955 to mixed reviews and muted audience reaction, becoming

6355-412: Is usually punctuated with a Western music score , including American folk music and Spanish / Mexican folk music such as country , Native American music , New Mexico music , and rancheras . Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid , desolate landscape of deserts and mountains . Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting

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6510-401: Is widely considered to be one of the director's least successful works and the original full-length version no longer exists. Contemporary reviews of the much shortened edited version were very negative, but the film was a moderate success at the box office, largely because of the popularity of one of its stars, Setsuko Hara. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kurosawa, Rashomon had been entered in

6665-586: The Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement . Posthumously, he was named " Asian of the Century " in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN , cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media. Kurosawa

6820-1342: The Atari 2600 and Gun Fight (1978) for the Bally Astrocade were derivative of Midway's Gun Fight . These early video games featured limited graphical capabilities , which had developers create Westerns to the most easily recognizable and popular tropes of the gunfighter shootouts. Western radio dramas were very popular from the 1930s to the 1960s. There were five types of Western radio dramas during this period: anthology programs, such as Empire Builders and Frontier Fighters ; juvenile adventure programs such as Red Ryder and Hopalong Cassidy ; legend and lore like Red Goose Indian Tales and Cowboy Tom's Round-Up ; adult Westerns like Fort Laramie and Frontier Gentleman ; and soap operas such as Cactus Kate . Some popular shows include The Lone Ranger (first broadcast in 1933), The Cisco Kid (first broadcast in 1942), Dr. Sixgun (first broadcast in 1954), Have Gun–Will Travel (first broadcast in 1958), and Gunsmoke (first broadcast in 1952). Many shows were done live, while others were transcribed. Westerns have been showcased in short-episodic web series. Examples include League of STEAM , Red Bird , and Arkansas Traveler . Within

6975-537: The Grand Canyon , Yosemite , and the giant redwoods , due in part to exhibitors' inability to switch over to widescreen during the Great Depression . After renewed commercial successes in the late 1930s, the popularity of Westerns continued to rise until its peak in the 1950s, when the number of Western films produced outnumbered all other genres combined. The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called

7130-626: The Man with No Name , dubbed the Dollars series due to the common theme in their titles: In July 2007, American comic book company Dynamite Entertainment announced that they were going to begin publishing a comic book featuring the Man with No Name, titled The Man With No Name . Set after the events of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , the comic is written by Christos Gage . Dynamite refers to him as "Blondie",

7285-597: The Venice Film Festival , due to the efforts of Giuliana Stramigioli , a Japan-based representative of an Italian film company, who had seen and admired the movie and convinced Daiei to submit it. On September 10, 1951, Rashomon was awarded the festival's highest prize, the Golden Lion , shocking not only Daiei but the international film world, which at the time was largely unaware of Japan's decades-old cinematic tradition. After Daiei briefly exhibited

7440-636: The Western , while at the same time offering an unprecedentedly (for the Japanese screen) graphic portrayal of violence. Some commentators have seen the Sanjuro character in this film as a fantasy figure who magically reverses the historical triumph of the corrupt merchant class over the samurai class. Featuring Tatsuya Nakadai in his first major role in a Kurosawa movie, and with innovative photography by Kazuo Miyagawa (who shot Rashomon ) and Takao Saito ,

7595-457: The space opera series Firefly used an explicitly Western theme for its portrayal of frontier worlds. Anime shows such as Cowboy Bebop , Trigun and Outlaw Star have been similar mixes of science-fiction and Western elements. The science fiction Western can be seen as a subgenre of either Westerns or science fiction. Elements of Western films can be found also in some films belonging essentially to other genres. For example, Kelly's Heroes

7750-419: The "Golden Age of the Western". It is epitomized by the work of several prominent directors including Robert Aldrich , Budd Boetticher , Delmer Daves , John Ford , and others. Some of the popular films during this era include Apache (1954), Broken Arrow (1950), and My Darling Clementine (1946). The changing popularity of the Western genre has influenced worldwide pop culture over time. During

7905-487: The 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963) and Red Beard (1965). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim. In 1990, he accepted

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8060-432: The 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this was due to the success of Sergio Leone 's storytelling method. After having been previously pronounced dead, a resurgence of Westerns occurred during the 1990s with films such as Dances with Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992), and Geronimo (1993), as Westerns once again increased in popularity. When television became popular in

8215-416: The 1960s, due in part to the shuttering of many pulp magazines, the popularity of televised Westerns , and the rise of the spy novel. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside of a few Western states, now only carry a small number of Western novels and short-story collections. Literary forms that share similar themes include stories of

8370-407: The 1970s. These games and drew on the imagery of a mythic West portrayed in stories, films, television shows, and other assorted Western-themed toys. When game developers went to the imaginary West to create new experiences, they often drew consciously or unconsciously from Western stories and films. The 1971 text-based, Mainframe computer game The Oregon Trail was first game to use the West as

8525-537: The 2010 and 2014 Blu-ray box set releases by MGM (distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment ), make specific reference to the set of films as "The Man with No Name Trilogy". Western (genre) The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and

8680-585: The American Civil War, Mexican bandit Tuco Ramírez and the Man with No Name, whom Tuco calls "Blondie", work together to scam small towns. Blondie collects the bounties on Tuco and then frees him as he is about to be hanged. A mercenary, "Angel Eyes", is searching for a man named "Jackson", who has stolen $ 200,000 from the Confederate Army. Angel Eyes threatens the family of one of Jackson's former accomplices and learns that Jackson goes under

8835-582: The American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier ". Originally, these films were called "Wild West dramas", a reference to Wild West shows like Buffalo Bill Cody's . The term "Western", used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western fiction , and were firmly in place before film became

8990-514: The American frontier, the gaucho literature of Argentina , and tales of the settlement of the Australian Outback. A number of visual artists focused their work on representations of the American Old West. American West-oriented art is sometimes referred to as "Western Art" by Americans. This relatively new category of art includes paintings, sculptures, and sometimes Native American crafts. Initially, subjects included exploration of

9145-484: The Bank of El Paso , and is forced to take part in it, being careful to avoid wounding innocents. El Indio transfers his gang to Agua Caliente, Mexico , where Manco and Mortimer attempt to steal the money to take it back to the Bank. El Indio discovers their plot but lets them escape as part of an operation to murder all but one of his associates, to split the money in two instead of with the entire gang. Battle ensues between

9300-672: The Eastern Bloc, or action films involving the Russian Revolution , the Russian Civil War , and the Basmachi rebellion. Many elements of space-travel series and films borrow extensively from the conventions of the Western genre. This is particularly the case in the space Western subgenre of science fiction. Peter Hyams 's Outland transferred the plot of High Noon to Io, moon of Jupiter. More recently,

9455-460: The Man with No Name, nicknamed "Manco", as a bounty hunter killing bandits for money, and Colonel Douglas Mortimer, a bounty hunter hunting for the same criminals. Both searching for the psychopathic Mexican bandit known as "El Indio" who escaped from jail, they rival each other, but realize that to kill him, they must work together. Manco infiltrates El Indio's gang, while Mortimer acts from the outside. Manco discovers El Indio's elaborate plot to rob

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9610-552: The Pacific were causing radioactive rainstorms in Japan and one particular incident in March had exposed a Japanese fishing boat to nuclear fallout , with disastrous results. It is in this anxious atmosphere that Kurosawa's next film, I Live in Fear , was conceived. The story concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshiro Mifune) so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family (both legal and extra-marital) to what he imagines

9765-524: The Prairie , McCloud , The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams , and the short-lived but highly acclaimed How the West Was Won that originated from a miniseries with the same name. In the 1990s and 2000s, hour-long Westerns and slickly packaged made-for-TV movie Westerns were introduced, such as Lonesome Dove (1989) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman . Also, new elements were once again added to

9920-562: The Tiger's Tail , based on the Kabuki play Kanjinchō and starring the comedian Enoken, with whom Kurosawa had often worked during his assistant director days, was completed in September 1945. By this time, Japan had surrendered and the occupation of Japan had begun. The new American censors interpreted the values allegedly promoted in the picture as overly "feudal" and banned the work. It

10075-419: The Western formula, such as the space Western , Firefly , created by Joss Whedon in 2002. Deadwood was a critically acclaimed Western series that aired on HBO from 2004 through 2006. Hell on Wheels , a fictionalized story of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad , aired on AMC for five seasons between 2011 and 2016. Longmire is a Western series that centered on Walt Longmire ,

10230-881: The Western genre are a series of short single reel silents made in 1894 by Edison Studios at their Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey . These featured veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show exhibiting skills acquired by living in the Old West – they included Annie Oakley (shooting) and members of the Sioux (dancing). The earliest known Western narrative film is the British short Kidnapping by Indians , made by Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn , England, in 1899. The Great Train Robbery (1903, based on

10385-645: The Western states and cowboy themes. Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell are two artists who captured the "Wild West" in paintings and sculpture. After the death of Remington Richard Lorenz became the preeminent artist painting in the Western genre. Some art museums, such as the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming and the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, feature American Western Art. With anime and manga ,

10540-478: The Wild West and modern technology like cars and cellphones, while also focusing primarily on being a Crime drama makes the show a unique spin on both genres. Walter's reliance on the desert environment makes the Western-feel a pivotal role in the show, and would continue to be used in the spinoff series Better Call Saul . The neo-Western drama Yellowstone was streamed from 2018-2024. Western fiction

10695-470: The alias of "Bill Carson", who has murdered both of his original accomplices. The partnership between Blondie and Tuco sours when Tuco complains that being repeatedly placed in a noose with only a single bullet standing between himself and death demands a larger cut than 50/50. Blondie betrays Tuco, but is caught and tortured by Tuco, who tries to put Blondie in a noose, but the raging war encroaches and drives them apart. Tuco catches Blondie and drags him through

10850-458: The best Japanese film ever made. In the most recent (2022) version of the widely respected British Film Institute (BFI) Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, Seven Samurai placed 20th among all films from all countries in the critics' and tied at 14th in the directors' polls, receiving a place in the Top Ten lists of 48 critics and 22 directors. In 1954, nuclear tests in

11005-418: The biggest hits of the year. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream screen star in the wake of a decade of headlining B Westerns. Wayne had been introduced to the screen 10 years earlier as the leading man in director Raoul Walsh 's spectacular widescreen The Big Trail , which failed at the box office in spite of being shot on location across the American West, including

11160-567: The book on its publication day, devoured it in one sitting, and immediately asked Toho to secure the film rights. Kurosawa's initial instinct proved correct as, within a few days, three other major Japanese studios also offered to buy the rights. Toho prevailed, and Kurosawa began pre-production on his debut work as director. Shooting of Sanshiro Sugata began on location in Yokohama in December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting

11315-419: The bounty hunters and the bandits, as the two kill all of them, although the one El Indio meant to spare is killed. Manco discovers that Mortimer's hunt for El Indio is personal and lets him kill the bandit in a duel. Manco keeps all the money and rides away. Manco piles the bandit corpses in a horse-drawn cart and rides away with the stolen bank money to collect his bounty earnings. In the third film, set during

11470-446: The bounty without Blondie, and the two form an alliance. During their journey to the treasure, they are arrested by Union Army soldiers and taken to a prison camp where Angel Eyes is posing as a Sergeant. Angel Eyes tortures Tuco into revealing his half of the secret and recruits Blondie to show him the grave. All three leave the prison. Blondie, Tuco, and Angel Eyes commence a game of betrayal and subterfuge. Tuco and Blondie are blocked by

11625-516: The bureaucratic world of its hero and the U.S. cultural colonization of Japan. (American pop songs figure prominently in the film.) Because of this strategy, the filmmakers are usually credited with saving the picture from the kind of sentimentality common to dramas about characters with terminal illnesses. Ikiru opened in October 1952 to rave reviews—it won Kurosawa his second Kinema Junpo "Best Film" award—and enormous box office success. It remains

11780-494: The chapter of Something Like an Autobiography that describes it—written nearly half a century after the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell". Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters. In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became

11935-618: The classic comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s (namely Kid Colt, Outlaw , Rawhide Kid , and Red Ryder ) or more modern ones as Blueberry ), cartoons, and parodies (such as Cocco Bill and Lucky Luke ). In the 1990s and 2000s, Western comics leaned towards the fantasy , horror and science fiction genres, usually involving supernatural monsters, or Christian iconography as in Preacher . More traditional Western comics are found throughout this period, though (e.g., Jonah Hex and Loveless ). Video game Westerns emerged in

12090-467: The closeness of the two men on the set, "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body." Donald Richie has described the rapport between them as a unique "symbiosis". When Kurosawa's exclusive contract with Toho came to an end in 1966, the 56-year-old director was seriously contemplating change. Observing the troubled state of the domestic film industry, and having already received dozens of offers from abroad,

12245-577: The closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States , particularly the Southwestern United States , as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada . The frontier is depicted in Western media as a sparsely populated hostile region patrolled by cowboys , outlaws , sheriffs , and numerous other stock gunslinger characters. Western narratives often concern

12400-492: The columnist Ed Sullivan , earned $ 35,000 in its first three weeks at a single New York theatre, an almost unheard-of sum at the time. This success in turn led to a vogue in America and the West for Japanese movies throughout the 1950s, replacing the enthusiasm for Italian neorealist cinema. By the end of 1952 Rashomon was released in Japan, the United States, and most of Europe. Among the Japanese film-makers whose work, as

12555-407: The completed film past the censors was an entirely different matter. The censorship office considered the work to be objectionably "British-American" by the standards of wartime Japan, and it was only through the intervention of director Yasujirō Ozu , who championed the film, that Sanshiro Sugata was finally accepted for release on March 25, 1943. (Kurosawa had just turned 33.) The movie became both

12710-497: The completion of Drunken Angel , Toho became embroiled in a months-long labor strike , in which the Toho union occupied the grounds of the studio. When Toho management ceased paying workers' salaries, Kurosawa formed a touring acting troupe to raise funds, directing Anton Chekhov 's The Proposal , and an adaptation of Drunken Angel starring Mifune and Shimura. Disillusioned by the division and violence between employees at Toho,

12865-752: The conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier. The Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are often played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them (e.g., True Grit has revenge and retribution as its main themes). This Western depiction of personal justice contrasts sharply with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order

13020-460: The conventional Kurosawan hero to combat a social evil that cannot be resolved through the actions of individuals, however courageous or cunning. Yojimbo ( The Bodyguard ), Kurosawa Production's second film, centers on a masterless samurai, Sanjuro, who strolls into a 19th-century town ruled by two opposing violent factions and provokes them into destroying each other. The director used this work to play with many genre conventions, particularly

13175-428: The culture, such as spaghetti Westerns (Italy), meat pie Westerns (Australia), ramen Westerns (Asia), and masala Westerns (India). Being period drama pieces, both the Western and samurai genre influenced each other in style and themes throughout the years. The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Akira Kurosawa 's film Seven Samurai , and A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo , which itself

13330-418: The desert. Tuco's revenge is interrupted when they stumble upon a Confederate carriage carrying the bullet-riddled and barely-alive Carson. Bleeding and desperate for water, Carson tells Tuco the name of the cemetery in which the gold is hidden, but while Tuco goes to get water, Blondie crawls past and gets the name of the grave in which the treasure is buried just as Carson dies. Tuco realizes that he cannot find

13485-484: The director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work. Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost high school , he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign literature. In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films and quickly made

13640-407: The earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary ), Edwin S. Porter 's film starring Broncho Billy Anderson , is often erroneously cited as the first Western, though George N. Fenin and William K. Everson point out (as mentioned above) that the "Edison company had played with Western material for several years prior to The Great Train Robbery ". Nonetheless, they concur that Porter's film "set

13795-463: The early 1960s, and their replacement by hour-long television shows, increasingly in color. Traditional Westerns died out in the late 1960s as a result of network changes in demographic targeting along with pressure from parental television groups. Future entries in the genre would incorporate elements from other genera, such as crime drama and mystery whodunit elements. Western shows from the 1970s included Hec Ramsey , Kung Fu , Little House on

13950-399: The film industry (which includes his five years as assistant director), he had directed twenty-three films, while during the remaining twenty-eight years, for many complex reasons, he would complete only seven more. Also, for reasons never adequately explained, Red Beard would be his final film starring Toshiro Mifune. Yū Fujiki , an actor who worked on The Lower Depths , observed, regarding

14105-442: The film is considered one of Kurosawa's most lightweight efforts, though it remains popular, not least because it is one of several major influences on George Lucas 's 1977 space opera , Star Wars . Starting with Rashomon , Kurosawa's productions had become increasingly large in scope and so had the director's budgets. Toho, concerned about this development, suggested that he might help finance his own works, therefore making

14260-465: The film premiered in April 1961 and was a critically and commercially successful venture, earning more than any previous Kurosawa film. The movie and its blackly comic tone were also widely imitated abroad. Sergio Leone 's A Fistful of Dollars was a virtual (unauthorized) scene-by-scene remake with Toho filing a lawsuit on Kurosawa's behalf and prevailing. Following the success of Yojimbo , Kurosawa found himself under pressure from Toho to create

14415-466: The film was blamed for a wave of kidnappings which occurred in Japan about this time (he himself received kidnapping threats directed at his young daughter, Kazuko). High and Low is considered by many commentators to be among the director's strongest works. Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, Red Beard . Based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and Injured , it

14570-468: The film's title into a postwar catchphrase . His next film, One Wonderful Sunday , premiered in July 1947 to mixed reviews. It is a relatively uncomplicated and sentimental love story dealing with an impoverished postwar couple trying to enjoy, within the devastation of postwar Tokyo, their one weekly day off. The movie bears the influence of Frank Capra , D. W. Griffith and F. W. Murnau , each of whom

14725-494: The finished product as dramatically unfocused and unsatisfactory, and almost all critics agree. However, it would be Kurosawa's second film of 1950 that would ultimately win him, and Japanese cinema, a whole new international audience. After finishing Scandal , Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios to make another film for them. Kurosawa picked a script by an aspiring young screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto , who would eventually work on nine of his films. Their first joint effort

14880-541: The first Kurosawa film to lose money during its original theatrical run. Today, it is considered by many to be among the finest films dealing with the psychological effects of the global nuclear stalemate. Kurosawa's next project, Throne of Blood , an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Macbeth —set, like Seven Samurai , in the Sengoku Era—represented an ambitious transposition of the English work into

15035-454: The future director of Godzilla . The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres. Scandal , released by Shochiku in April 1950, was inspired by the director's personal experiences with, and anger towards, Japanese yellow journalism . The work is an ambitious mixture of courtroom drama and social problem film about free speech and personal responsibility, but even Kurosawa regarded

15190-426: The genre tends towards the science-fiction Western – e.g., Cowboy Bebop (1998 anime), Trigun (1995–2007 manga), and Outlaw Star (1996–1999 manga). Although contemporary Westerns also appear, such as Koya no Shonen Isamu , a 1971 shonen manga about a boy with a Japanese father and a Native American mother, or El Cazador de la Bruja , a 2007 anime television series set in modern-day Mexico. Part 7 of

15345-522: The gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice , freedom, rugged individualism, manifest destiny , and the national history and identity of the United States . Native American populations were often portrayed as averse foes or savages . Originating in vaquero heritage and Western fiction , the genre popularized the Western lifestyle , country - Western music , and Western wear globally. Throughout

15500-464: The harshness and isolation of the wilderness, and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films generally have specific settings, such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, the saloon usually emphasizes that this is the Wild West ; it

15655-466: The heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress . Similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples (e.g. the later Westerns of John Ford or Clint Eastwood 's Unforgiven , about an old contract killer ) are more morally ambiguous. Westerns often stress

15810-412: The heroic central character is a woman, Yukie ( Setsuko Hara ), who, born into upper-middle-class privilege, comes to question her values in a time of political crisis. The original script had to be extensively rewritten and, because of its controversial theme and gender of its protagonist, the completed work divided critics. Nevertheless, it managed to win the approval of audiences, who turned variations on

15965-676: The history of the genre, it has seen popular revivals and been incorporated into various subgenres. The classic Western is a morality drama , presenting the conflict between wilderness and civilization . Stories commonly center on the life of a male drifter , cowboy , or gunslinger who rides a horse and is armed with a revolver or rifle . The male characters typically wear broad-brimmed and high-crowned Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas , vests , and cowboy boots with spurs . While many wear conventional shirts and trousers, alternatives include buckskins and dusters . Women are generally cast in secondary roles as love interests for

16120-412: The idea of working outside Japan appealed to him as never before. For his first foreign project, Kurosawa chose a story based on a Life magazine article. The Embassy Pictures action thriller, to be filmed in English and called simply Runaway Train , would have been his first in color. But the language barrier proved a major problem, and the English version of the screenplay was not even finished by

16275-401: The illicit drug market, eventually turning into a ruthless drug dealer and killer. While the show has scenes in a populated suburban neighborhood and nearby Albuquerque , much of the show takes place in the desert, where Walter often takes his RV car out into the open desert to cook his meth, and most action sequences occur in the desert, similar to old-fashioned Western movies. The clash between

16430-722: The influence of Kurosawa. The character Han Solo dressed like an archetypal gunslinger, and the Mos Eisley cantina is much like an Old West saloon. Meanwhile, films such as The Big Lebowski , which plucked actor Sam Elliott out of the Old West and into a Los Angeles bowling alley, and Midnight Cowboy , about a Southern-boy-turned-gigolo in New York (who disappoints a client when he does not measure up to Gary Cooper), transplanted Western themes into modern settings for both purposes of parody and homage. Akira Kurosawa Akira Kurosawa ( 黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明 , Kurosawa Akira , March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998)

16585-406: The larger scope of the Western genre, there are several recognized subgenres. Some subgenres, such as spaghetti Westerns , maintain standard Western settings and plots, while others take the Western theme and archetypes into different supergenres, such as neo-Westerns or space Westerns . For a time, Westerns made in countries other than the United States were often labeled by foods associated with

16740-639: The last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director for Yamamoto, Horse (1941), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as his mentor was occupied with the shooting of another film. Yamamoto advised Kurosawa that a good director needed to master screenwriting. Kurosawa soon realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher than what he was paid as an assistant director. He later wrote or co-wrote all his films, and frequently penned screenplays for other directors such as Satsuo Yamamoto 's film, A Triumph of Wings ( Tsubasa no gaika , 1942). This outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as

16895-788: The late 1940s and 1950s, Television Westerns quickly became an audience favorite. Beginning with rebroadcasts of existing films, a number of movie cowboys had their own TV shows. As demand for the Western increased, new stories and stars were introduced. A number of long-running TV Westerns became classics in their own right, such as: The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), Death Valley Days (1952–1970), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955–1961), Cheyenne (1955–1962), Gunsmoke (1955–1975), Maverick (1957–1962), Have Gun – Will Travel (1957–1963), Wagon Train (1957–1965), The Rifleman (1958–1963), Rawhide (1959–1966), Bonanza (1959–1973), The Virginian (1962–1971), and The Big Valley (1965–1969). The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

17050-403: The late 1950s, television began increasingly to dominate the leisure time of the formerly large and loyal Japanese cinema audience. And as film company revenues dropped, so did their appetite for risk—particularly the risk represented by Kurosawa's costly production methods. Red Beard also marked the midway point, chronologically, in the artist's career. During his previous twenty-nine years in

17205-485: The literary descendants of the knights-errant , who stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian romances . Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight-errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various kinds, and bound to no fixed social structures, but only to his own innate code of honor. Like knights-errant,

17360-461: The major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and producers. These smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. An exception was The Big Trail, a 1930 American pre-Code Western early widescreen film shot on location across the American West starring 23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh. The epic film noted for its authenticity

17515-419: The major studio Toho ), advertised for assistant directors. Although he had demonstrated no previous interest in film as a profession, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films and find ways to overcome them. His half-mocking view was that if the deficiencies were fundamental, there was no way to correct them. Kurosawa's essay earned him

17670-563: The male lead; or in supporting roles as saloon girls, prostitutes or as the wives of pioneers and settlers . The wife character often provides a measure of comic relief . Other recurring characters include Native Americans of various tribes described as Indians or Red Indians, African Americans , Chinese Americans , Spaniards , Mexicans , law enforcement officers , bounty hunters , outlaws , bartenders , merchants , gamblers , soldiers (especially mounted cavalry ), and settlers ( farmers , ranchers , and townsfolk). The ambience

17825-683: The manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is based in the American Western setting. The story follows racers in a transcontinental horse race, the "Steel Ball Run". Golden Kamuy (2014–2022) shifts its setting to the fallout of the Russo-Japanese War , specifically focusing on Hokkaido and Sakhalin , and featuring the Ainu people and other local tribes instead of Native Americans, as well other recognizable Western tropes. Western comics have included serious entries, (such as

17980-420: The most acclaimed of all the artist's films set in the modern era. In December 1952, Kurosawa took his Ikiru screenwriters, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, for a forty-five-day secluded residence at an inn to create the screenplay for his next movie, Seven Samurai . The ensemble work was Kurosawa's first proper samurai film , the genre for which he would become most famous. The simple story, about

18135-528: The most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. Rashomon (1950), which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival . The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout

18290-460: The movie stars Takashi Shimura as a cancer-ridden Tokyo bureaucrat, Watanabe, on a final quest for meaning before his death. For the screenplay, Kurosawa brought in Hashimoto as well as writer Hideo Oguni , who would go on to co-write twelve Kurosawa films. Despite the work's grim subject matter, the screenwriters took a satirical approach, which some have compared to the work of Brecht , to both

18445-458: The new widescreen format that had been gaining popularity in Japan. The resulting film, The Hidden Fortress , is an action-adventure comedy-drama about a medieval princess, her loyal general, and two peasants who all need to travel through enemy lines in order to reach their home region. Released in December 1958, The Hidden Fortress became an enormous box-office success in Japan and was warmly received by critics both in Japan and abroad. Today,

18600-463: The nickname Tuco uses for him in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . The first issue was released in March 2008, entitled, The Man with No Name: The Good, The Bad, and The Uglier . Luke Lieberman and Matt Wolpert took over the writing for issues #7–11. Initially, Chuck Dixon was scheduled to take over the writing chores with issue #12, but Dynamite ended the series and opted to use Dixon's storyline for

18755-471: The old undertaker Piripero as "Joe", plays them against each other by collecting prizes for giving information, capturing prisoners and killing men, while also helping a woman, her husband and their son, held captive by the ruthless Ramón Rojo, to escape. He is discovered by the Rojos and tortured, but escapes. The Rojos massacre the unarmed Baxters while searching for him, but helped by Piripero he hides away from

18910-407: The patients at the clinic, whom he at first despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity. Yūzō Kayama , who plays Yasumoto, was an extremely popular film and music star at the time, particularly for his "Young Guy" ( Wakadaishō ) series of musical comedies, so signing him to appear in the film virtually guaranteed Kurosawa strong box-office. The shoot, the filmmaker's longest ever, lasted well over

19065-432: The pattern—of crime, pursuit, and retribution—for the Western film as a genre". The film's popularity opened the door for Anderson to become the screen's first Western star; he made several hundred Western film shorts. So popular was the genre that he soon faced competition from Tom Mix and William S. Hart . Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era (1894–1927). With the advent of sound in 1927–1928,

19220-416: The popular actor Ken'ichi Enomoto , known as "Enoken". Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year. Kurosawa's responsibilities increased, and he worked at tasks ranging from stage construction and film development to location scouting, script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, editing, and second-unit directing. In

19375-452: The primeval forest of Nara , wrapped on August 17. Just one week was spent in hurried post-production, hampered by a studio fire, and the finished film premiered at Tokyo's Imperial Theatre on August 25, expanding nationwide the following day. The movie was met by lukewarm reviews, with many critics puzzled by its unique theme and treatment, but it was nevertheless a moderate financial success for Daiei. Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku,

19530-418: The proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting. With the increasing production of talking pictures in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo died by suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death and

19685-465: The reception of later generations of Japanese film-makers ranging from Kon Ichikawa , Masaki Kobayashi , Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to Juzo Itami , Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike . His career boosted by his sudden international fame, Kurosawa, now reunited with his original film studio, Toho (which would go on to produce his next 11 films), set to work on his next project, Ikiru . Based on Leo Tolstoy 's The Death of Ivan Ilyich ,

19840-637: The settlement of other planets is depicted in ways explicitly modeled on American settlement of the West. For example, in his Tunnel in the Sky , settlers set out to the planet New Canaan, via an interstellar teleporter portal across the galaxy, in Conestoga wagons , their captain sporting mustaches and a little goatee and riding a Palomino horse—with Heinlein explaining that the colonists would need to survive on their own for some years, so horses are more practical than machines. Stephen King 's The Dark Tower

19995-503: The studio's potential losses smaller, while in turn allowing himself more artistic freedom as co-producer. Kurosawa agreed, and the Kurosawa Production Company was established in April 1959, with Toho as the majority shareholder. Despite risking his own money, Kurosawa chose a story that was more directly critical of the Japanese business and political elites than any previous work. The Bad Sleep Well , based on

20150-488: The style of a favorite writer of his, Georges Simenon , it was the director's first collaboration with screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima , who would later help to script eight other Kurosawa films. A famous, virtually wordless sequence, lasting over eight minutes, shows the detective, disguised as an impoverished veteran, wandering the streets in search of the gun thief; it employed actual documentary footage of war-ravaged Tokyo neighborhoods shot by Kurosawa's friend, Ishirō Honda ,

20305-403: The subsequent Kantō Massacre of 1923, Heigo took the thirteen-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When Akira wanted to look away from the corpses of humans and animals scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, encouraging Akira instead to face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as

20460-399: The time of his birth and one deceased, leaving Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother. In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to Western traditions and considered theatre and motion pictures to have educational merit. He encouraged his children to watch films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six. An important formative influence

20615-430: The town. The Man with No Name returns as the Rojos are preparing to hang the local innkeeper, Silvanito, who had befriended him. He kills Don Miguel Rojo, uses his last bullet to free Silvanito, and kills Ramón in a gunslinging duel. After the last remaining Rojo brother, Esteban, is killed by Silvanito while trying to shoot from a window, the Man with No Name departs from the now-peaceful town. The second film introduces

20770-419: The two paradoxically became close. They married on May 21, 1945, with Yaguchi two months pregnant (she never resumed her acting career), and the couple would remain together until her death in 1985. They had two children, both surviving Kurosawa as of 2018 : a son, Hisao, born December 20, 1945, who served as producer on some of his father's last projects, and Kazuko , a daughter, born April 29, 1954, who became

20925-564: The underhanded tactics of Toho leadership, and the breaking of the occupation by police and military standoff , Kurosawa left Toho, later recalling "I had come to understand that the studio I had thought was my home actually belonged to strangers". Kurosawa, with producer Sōjirō Motoki and fellow directors and friends Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio Naruse and Senkichi Taniguchi, formed a new independent production unit called Film Art Association (Eiga Geijutsu Kyōkai). For this organization's debut work, and first film for Daiei studios , Kurosawa turned to

21080-527: The war, Kurosawa, influenced by the democratic ideals of the Occupation, sought to make films that would establish a new respect towards the individual and the self . The first such film, No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), inspired by both the 1933 Takigawa incident and the Hotsumi Ozaki wartime spy case, criticized Japan's prewar regime for its political oppression. Atypically for the director,

21235-408: The warring Union and Confederates. Blondie tricks Tuco into revealing the name of the cemetery. The gunslingers arrive at the graveyard where the treasure is hidden, but find themselves in a three-way standoff. Blondie takes up a burnt-ended cigar and a rock and tells the others that he will write the name of the grave marker on the bottom of a stone. He places the stone in the middle of the cemetery and

21390-420: The young actor's immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando 's defiant stance would startle American film audiences a few years later. The film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was chosen by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics poll as the best film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa movies to be so honored. After

21545-423: The young man greatly impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of the other judges. Drunken Angel is often considered the director's first major work. Although the script, like all of Kurosawa's occupation-era works, had to go through rewrites due to American censorship, Kurosawa felt that this was the first film in which he was able to express himself freely. A gritty story of a doctor who tries to save

21700-480: The young, as threatening the country's democracy by giving too much power to corporations and politicians. The film opened in September 1960 to positive critical reaction and modest box office success. The 25-minute opening sequence depicting a corporate wedding reception is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's most skillfully executed set pieces, but the remainder of the film is often perceived as disappointing by comparison. The movie has also been criticized for employing

21855-413: Was Stray Dog . It is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre) that explores the mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery through the story of a young detective, played by Mifune, and his fixation on the recovery of his handgun, which was stolen by a penniless war veteran who proceeds to use it to rob and murder. Adapted from an unpublished novel by Kurosawa in

22010-452: Was The Idiot , an adaptation of the novel by the director's favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky . The story is relocated from Russia to Hokkaido , but otherwise adheres closely to the original, a fact seen by many critics as detrimental to the work. A studio-mandated edit shortened it from Kurosawa's original cut of 265 minutes to just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative exceedingly difficult to follow. The severely edited film version

22165-439: Was Midway 's Gun Fight , an adaptation of Taito 's Western Gun (1975) which featured two players against each other in a duel set on a sparse desert landscape with a few cacti and a moving covered wagon to hide behind. Atari 's Outlaw (1976) followed which explicitly framed the shootouts between "good guys" and "outlaws" also borrowing from gunfighter themes and imagery. Early console games such as Outlaw (1978) for

22320-419: Was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema . Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style , strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production . Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following

22475-635: Was a financial failure due to Depression era theatres not willing to invest in widescreen technology. By the late 1930s, the Western film was widely regarded as a pulp genre in Hollywood, but its popularity was dramatically revived in 1939 by major studio productions such as Dodge City starring Errol Flynn , Jesse James with Tyrone Power , Union Pacific with Joel McCrea , Destry Rides Again featuring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich , and especially John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach starring John Wayne , which became one of

22630-400: Was among Kurosawa's favorite directors. Another film released in 1947 with Kurosawa's involvement was the action-adventure thriller, Snow Trail , directed by Senkichi Taniguchi from Kurosawa's screenplay. It marked the debut of the intense young actor Toshiro Mifune . It was Kurosawa who, with his mentor Yamamoto, had intervened to persuade Toho to sign Mifune, during an audition in which

22785-469: Was based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 's experimental short story " In a Grove ", which recounts the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife from various different and conflicting points of view. Kurosawa saw potential in the script, and with Hashimoto's help, polished and expanded it and then pitched it to Daiei, who were happy to accept the project due to its low budget. The shooting of Rashomon began on July 7, 1950, and, after extensive location work in

22940-561: Was born on March 23, 1910, in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu (1864–1948), a member of a samurai family from Akita Prefecture , worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school , while his mother Shima (1870–1952) came from a merchant's family living in Osaka . Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy family, with two of his siblings already grown up at

23095-423: Was credited either as "Dan Savio" or "Leo Nichols", depending on the print. A Fistful of Dollars earned a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 65 on Metcritic . For a Few Dollars More earned a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 74 on Metcritic. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly earned a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 on Metcritic. The Dollars Trilogy spawned a series of spin-off books focused on

23250-483: Was his elementary school teacher Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general. During this time, Akira also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship. Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa (1906–1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake and

23405-470: Was inspired by Red Harvest , an American detective novel by Dashiell Hammett . Kurosawa was influenced by American Westerns and was a fan of the genre, most especially John Ford . Despite the Cold War , the Western was a strong influence on Eastern Bloc cinema, which had its own take on the genre, the so-called Red Western or Ostern. Generally, these took two forms: either straight Westerns shot in

23560-560: Was invented by the American distributor United Artists , looking for a strong angle to sell the films as a trilogy. Eastwood's character has a name and a different one in each film, "Joe", "Manco" and "Blondie", respectively. The first film has the Man with No Name arriving in the Mexico–United States border town of San Miguel, the base of two rival smuggling families, the Rojos and the Baxters. The Man with No Name, referred to by

23715-409: Was not released until 1952, the year another Kurosawa film, Ikiru , was also released. Ironically, while in production, the film had already been savaged by Japanese wartime censors as too Western and "democratic" (they particularly disliked the comic porter played by Enoken), so the movie most probably would not have seen the light of day even if the war had continued beyond its completion. After

23870-456: Was regarded as artistically successful. The film premiered in September 1957, receiving a mixed response similar to that of Throne of Blood . However, some critics rank it among the director's most underrated works. Kurosawa's three next movies after Seven Samurai had not managed to capture Japanese audiences in the way that that film had. The mood of the director's work had been growing increasingly pessimistic and dark even as Japan entered

24025-515: Was the first Western television series written for adults, premiering four days before Gunsmoke on September 6, 1955. The peak year for television Westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during primetime. At least six of them were connected in some extent to Wyatt Earp : The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp , Bat Masterson , Tombstone Territory , Broken Arrow , Johnny Ringo , and Gunsmoke . Increasing costs of American television production weeded out most action half-hour series in

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