YOJIMBO LA SFIDA DEL SAMURAI di Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo, Giappone/1961-V.O. RESTAURATA con Sottotitoli in Italiano)

On September 12th, sixty years have passed since the first screening, at the Supercinema in Florence, of what was supposed to be just a B-movie, signed by an unknown Bob Robertson and which, instead, became a monument of cinema history. "For a Fistful of Dollars" won over a vast audience day by day, imposed a genre, the spaghetti western, which would make the Italian film industry the second largest in the world.

Sergio Leone was thirty-four years old, with a career as an assistant director, a debut, "The Colossus of Rhodes", which had led him into a dead end. It was the viewing in a Roman cinema of "Yojimbo", distributed in Italy after its presentation at the Venice Film Festival, where Mifune won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, that made him envisage the possibility of turning it into a western. Leone, who had adored "Seven Samurai", was well aware of the success that John Sturgess had achieved in 1960 with the western remake of Kurosawa's masterpiece, "The Magnificent Seven", and immediately understood that "Yojimbo" could become a low-budget western because most of the scenes could take place in a single location. Leone studied Kurosawa's film shot by shot and created a very faithful copy. The history of art is made up of intuitions and a continuous transmission from one author to another. What Leone accomplished, however, is something that only the greatest artists can do, because "For a Fistful of Dollars" owes everything to its original but, at the same time, is completely different for the infinite variations and inventions that transform it into the archetype of the new western season. A film that changed the lives of Leone, Eastwood, and Morricone.

"Now the two films exist in restored versions and we thought it was the right time to present them together to the Italian audience." (Gian Luca Farinelli)

"Yojimbo - The Samurai's Challenge"
by Akira Kurosawa
(Yojimbo, Japan/1961, 110 minutes)
The first of the two films that Kurosawa dedicated to the ronin (samurai without a master) Sanjuro, "The Samurai's Challenge" takes place in the Tokugawa era (17th century), in the twilight of ideals and in the chaos of conflicts between powerful factions. Sanjuro pretends to serve a merchant in the war against his rival, but secretly devises a strategy that leads to the mutual massacre of both parties. Narrated with an impeccable mix of effects, twists, sharp irony, and successful moments of grotesque humor, it is a western that echoes Kurosawa's love for Ford's cinema. Unintentionally inspired the Italian western genre: in fact, Leone plagiarized its plot in "For a Fistful of Dollars." (Roberto Chiesi)
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