Rhapsodies

Having picked up a copy of The Hidden Fortress., one of my favorite Akira Kurosawa movies, from the library and from that I decided that my theme for the week would be remakes of Kurosawa films.

The first in my selection, Kakushi Toride no San-Akunin: The Last Princess, was a direct remake of Hidden Fortress directed by Shinji Higuchi. It starts out just like the original, two commoners escape from chattel slavery in the middle of a war, discover gold and get shanghaied into moving the gold by it’s owners, the last retainer of a defeated clan and their princess, to help transport it from the Hidden Fortress through enemy lines to the final destination. But somewhere in the middle it starts to deviate in it’s own way going for a more action driven finale.

While it certainly higher production values then the original film it lacks any of Kurosawa’s skill of pacing jumping the chase of the plot rather than the nearly half hour of buildup of the original, to make matters worse I think it ultimately misses the whole point of the original film focusing more on the princess as a protagonist than the peasants and then redeeming one of them and turning him into the real hero of the film.

The next on my list The Outrage is a western version of Rashomon, directed by Martin Ritt. Done so straight that there’s hardly any other way to describe it,other than Rashomon Gate s replaced with a train station with a preacher, prospector and con artist talking about all the different versions of the murder that happened.

This has officially become my favorite Western version of a Kurosawa film. It is a lovely all star cast with a very young William Shatner as the preacher,  Edward G. Robinson as the wonderfully amoral cynical con artist and Paul Newman as Toshiba Mifune’s character (though in this version he’s a Mexican Bandit) It’s wonderfully done in such a minimalist quality I could imagine it being staged as a play. If I have any criticism about it is that maybe it stays a little too close to Kurosawa’s style.