52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

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mteller
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#101 Post by mteller » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:25 pm

The left and the right. Argh, what the hell?

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swo17
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#102 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:40 pm

kekid wrote:Looking at Beaver's screencaps, there is significantly more information on the left side of the BFI caps than the Criterion Blu Ray. This is unfortunate, because the Criterion image is clearly superior.
It looks like the BFI caps for Sanjuro have maybe 5% more information on either side. I don't know that I'd call that significant. Furthermore, the Criterion caps look like they have the same (or occasionally slightly more) information on the top and bottom. So it's not as though Criterion is zooming in on the image. What this comes down to is that BFI is presenting the film in 2.55:1 while Criterion is presenting it in I believe 2.38:1. Does anyone know what the intended aspect ratio is for this film?

EDIT: I don't know what kind of research Gary did, but he does say this:
All the research I can determine indicates that the original aspect ratio is 2.35:1 which the Criterion REISSUE adheres to.

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#103 Post by Zot! » Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:47 pm

swo17 wrote:EDIT: I don't know what kind of research Gary did, but he does say this:
All the research I can determine indicates that the original aspect ratio is 2.35:1 which the Criterion REISSUE adheres to.
Despite that, from the Beaver frames only, the wider BFI ratio appears to be the intended in-camera framing. Though it is not tragic, they probably had to conform to 2.35:1 after they shot it for some reason, I'd be curious to know the story behind this.

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manicsounds
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#104 Post by manicsounds » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:14 pm

The BFI "High and Low" has the same thing. There is a lot more on the sides, but I think this is not the intended ratio. Tohoscope is always 2.35:1.

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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#105 Post by aox » Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:00 pm


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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#106 Post by cdnchris » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:48 am


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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#107 Post by aox » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:05 pm

Just curious:

When you buy the 'box' of the two films together, is it a Che-type situation where both are housed in a cardboard box? or do you just get the two discs as if you bought them separately?

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#108 Post by swo17 » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:09 pm

I would assume it's like Che, as that was precisely how the DVD set was packaged.

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#109 Post by cdnchris » Tue Mar 09, 2010 5:34 pm


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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#110 Post by aox » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:42 pm

Got through both films on Blu and they are gorgeous. I also came out liking them even more than I remember; even Yojimbo which I originally thought was the weaker of the two despite its popularity when I saw them 4 or 5 years ago.

I wanted to ask the board, what are the general impressions of the Prince commentaries?

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#111 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:45 pm

aox wrote:I wanted to ask the board, what are the general impressions of the Prince commentaries?
One of the great pleasures of waiting for a Kurosawa film from Criterion is because of the excellent commentary Prince always gives. For Yojimbo and Sanjuro, he doesn't just speak about the film and it's history, but always contextualizes it within it's place in both Japanese cinematic history, it's relation to actual Japanese history (both past and present), it's full of incredibly interesting observations and for this pair of films, he offers detail about the type of sword-fighting style Mifune does. All of his commentaries are invaluable.

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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#112 Post by aox » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:51 pm

Thank You. I watched the Yojimbo commentary tonight and I thought it was fascinating. I was worried that some of the people here might accuse him of being a 'narrator' (the great commentary sin), and nothing on par with Gene Youngblood's commentary on L'avventura which I feel is the hallmark in the world of commentary. I might have listened to that commentary more start to finish than I have actually sat and watched the film. I look forward to visiting Prince's commentary on Sanjuro, and revisiting both for years to come.

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domino harvey
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#113 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:57 pm

Prince did the infamous Straw Dogs commentary, which is a required listen before deeming anything else the best Criterion commentary track 8-)

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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#114 Post by aox » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:01 pm

Without derailing the thread too much (I guess the discussion can be moved)...

infamous?

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Murdoch
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#115 Post by Murdoch » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:02 pm

It definitely offers an interesting interpretation, although I don't necessarily buy it.

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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#116 Post by aox » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:13 pm

Murdoch wrote:It definitely offers an interesting interpretation, although I don't necessarily buy it.
the Prince commentaries?

Sorry, I almost wish I could delete my previous post inquiring about Straw Dogs despite being curious.

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domino harvey
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#117 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:31 pm

Pretty sure he's talking about the Straw Dogs commentary, discussion of which abounds in the regular thread

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aox
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#118 Post by aox » Thu Mar 25, 2010 12:40 am

haha ok. I was seriously wondering if the objection was against Prince's interpretation of these films beings a message on post-war Japan's burst of capitalism.

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Murdoch
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#119 Post by Murdoch » Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:58 am

Yeah, talking about the Straw Dogs commentary, which is also by Prince. Haven't heard the Yojimbo commentary, although I'm eager to since my enjoyment of the film has dwindled with subsequent viewings - I've come to find the story to be almost nihilistic in how the arrogant Mifune manipulates the town for nothing more than his own pleasure and in the end leaves it worse off, it never sits well with me. I really should get around to seeing Sanjuro, though.

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#120 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:53 am

Murdoch wrote:I've come to find the story to be almost nihilistic in how the arrogant Mifune manipulates the town for nothing more than his own pleasure and in the end leaves it worse off, it never sits well with me.
Isn't that all in the humor of Yojimbo? Think about all the deaths that are almost played for laughs and the moment he rests on top of the pole just to watch the two clans act like jokes in front of each other. The movie is pretty silly from the start when he decides to throw a stick to tell him what direction to go in.

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Murdoch
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#121 Post by Murdoch » Thu Mar 25, 2010 12:09 pm

That's true and it's not a criticism against the film as much as a personal aversion of mine to the character of Sanjuro; for example despite his heroic act to save the lovers I never got the impression he cared either way about their fate, that his actions were to give him the characteristics of a hero so he wouldn't come off as a complete jerk. While his suffering at the hands of the clansmen seems to have been a devastating experience for him, he ends up reverting back to his former behavior as he brushes off the town's problems and leaves. I'm not one to usually be bothered when a character isn't "changed" by the film's end, but I find myself taking away less and less from the film with each viewing and that the film's humor is directly tied with whether or not you feel the same way about Sanjuro's actions as he does. My feelings may shift again in its favor, but as of now I don't derive much enjoyment from it.

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knives
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#122 Post by knives » Thu Mar 25, 2010 12:38 pm

If that's your problem with Yojimbo, I have similar ones with it, than you'll probably prefer Sanjuro when you get around to it. Mifune is far more sympathetic and seems to feel sadness when he kills.

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#123 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Thu Mar 25, 2010 1:22 pm

knives wrote:If that's your problem with Yojimbo, I have similar ones with it, than you'll probably prefer Sanjuro when you get around to it. Mifune is far more sympathetic and seems to feel sadness when he kills.
Probably reflects how Kurosawa honestly felt after making Yojimbo. It is the perfect companion piece to Yojimbo as Mifune's character starts questioning the need for all the violence. Despite all the violence in Kurosawa's films, he never seems to be a big advocate of it and shows terrible consequences for it, except in Yojimbo where Mifune just carries on with his life after everything. It's clear though that his viewpoint has changed in Sanjuro when
Sanjuro spoilerShow
Mifune refuses to fight Nakadai in the very end with the tense three minute shot of there back and forth about honor and retribution on to end with Nakadai's death in one of Kurosawa's most explicitly bloody sequences. All that guilt from Yojimbo seems to impact him in particular when he meets the women in Sanjuro who question him about his violent methods of getting things done and the foolish students who assume needless violence will fix all the problems.
It tells you a lot that the next and last time Kurosawa was to use Mifune, he plays a tough but incredibly gentle-hearted doctor who works for the needs for people who normally can't get it and that after his one act of violence in Red Beard, he turns around and offers medical care to everyone he's hurt.

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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#124 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:24 pm

Murdoch wrote:While his suffering at the hands of the clansmen seems to have been a devastating experience for him, he ends up reverting back to his former behavior as he brushes off the town's problems and leaves.
Really? So when he spares the kid at the end, indeed the same kid he saw run away from home in the beginning to become a gambler, you believe this means nothing?

The movie Sanjuro makes this more explicit, but an essential part of Mifune's character even in Yojimbo is his ironies, the way he's always disgusing his genuine feelings with gruff pronouncements that usually always mean the opposite of what they express. For example, upon being told the story of the two lover's and the child, he calls the man's situation "pathetic," even tho' one can see the man's plight has had a genuine effect on Sanjuro, and indeed will motivate his following actions in the movie. Sanjuro says "pathetic" in a annoyed manner, but his actual meaning, that there is real pathos in the situation, is the opposite of his manner, as his consequent behaviour proves.

Yojimbo is not a nihilistic film. It has a very strong sense of value, not only on behalf of the characters (the tavernkeeper, who is the film's moral chorus; the lovers and their son, the only innocents within the clan war; and I would say Sanjuro himself, however he'd like to appear otherwise), --not only on behalf of them, but on behalf of the filmmaker himself. Kurosawa clearly made the film out of a sense of moral outrage, and there is indeed a fierceness in his representation of the film's world. Yojimbo is a grotesque parody of real life. This might not be to everyone's taste, but I don't think 'the film is not sufficiently happy' is a genuine criticism.

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Murdoch
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Re: 52-53 Yojimbo and Sanjuro

#125 Post by Murdoch » Thu Mar 25, 2010 5:24 pm

While I will concede that Yojimbo is not nihilistic and that the kid bears significance for Sanjuro, it's not the film as a whole that turns me off of it but specific parts that I just didn't buy into: most specifically Sanjuro's concern with the plight of the lovers. Despite Sanjuro's actions I never felt he had any real sympathy for the lovers and saved them from the clan merely because he's the protagonist, that he's playing this role of savior but acts as much as possible against it until he has to do something heroic; he saves the couple not out of concern for them but to fulfill the role imposed upon him by the film. My reading - which I'm fleshing out as I write this - posits Sanjuro as a sort of self-aware protagonist forced into his role and going through the motions of it with little care for how the events unfold as long as the innocent/redeemable are saved and that the destruction of the town matters little to Sanjuro since he has fulfilled his function and can now move on. While he does demonstrate a sympathy for certain characters his role as hero feels superficial to me because I see Sanjuro not as someone who plays the hero willingly, but is forced into this position - not that anything within the context of the film forces him to be the hero, but that the film acts as a commentary on cinematic heroism by Kurosawa since Sanjuro exists in the film as the protagonist and therefore must fulfill his obligations as hero.

In the act of writing this my liking of the film has actually increased, which was unexpected since I thought the opposite would happen. However, this reading of mine may prove false since it's been several months since I've last watched the film.

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