Clint Eastwood has become an icon of the silver screen, from actor to director; he has been both the face in front and behind the camera of numerous classics. However, according to Rotten Tomatoes, his first starring role has stood the test of time and remains his most well-received performance. His performance as a nameless protagonist certainly packed quite the punch and went on to help establish Italian Westerns as the most stylized in the genre. Yet, the film’s success can also be attributed to it being a remake of a Japanese classic, a fact that not everyone is aware of.
We will examine Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars and Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, comparing their differences and similarities and examining how the production led to a lawsuit.
A Fistful of Dollars Is Clint Eastwood’s Highest Rated Film
Currently sitting at 98% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 91% audience score, A Fistful of Dollars sits as Clint Eastwood’s highest-rated film (A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies sits at 100%, but this is just an appearance as ‘self’). It is closely followed by two other classics in Escape from Alcatraz and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at 97%. The movie would mark Clint Eastwood’s first lead role in a film, and would also kick off one of the most beloved film trilogies of all time in “The Man With No Name,” which included A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For A Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).
Made by Italian director Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars would become one of the movies to define the Spaghetti Western. Offering an abundance of style and a masterfully executed soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, the movie follows a nameless protagonist entering a small Mexican town and getting caught between two rival criminal families, the Baxters and the Rojos. The nameless lead then starts to play the two families against each other to turn a profit but gets caught up in the family affairs when he helps save a woman named Marisol from the ruthless leader of the Rojos.
While a landmark of the Western genre, A Fistful of Dollars was actually a remake of a film from a source that many may not have been aware of
A Fistful of Dollars Is a Remake of the Japanese Film Yojimbo
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is a spiritual remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Yojimbo follows a nameless ronin (played by Toshiro Mifune) who arrives in a small town where two rival criminal gangs fight for control. Both try to employ ronin, but he ends up playing against each other for his profit. In the process, he also rescues a farmer and his wife, who have been taken hostage by one of the gangs. The nameless protagonist also straddles the same moral gray area as seen in A Fistful of Dollars, where he becomes an unlikely ‘hero’ despite his opportunistic and cynical nature.
If the plots of the two sound very similar, and the idea of it being a ‘spiritual’ remake may sound confusing, the fact is that A Fistful of Dollars was never touted as a remake of the Japanese classic Yojimbo. There are some slight differences between the two, but there were enough similarities that it ended up causing legal issues.
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Differences and Similarities Between A Fistful of Dollars and Yojimbo
The major notable difference between A Fistful of Dollars and Yojimbo is the Western setting, taking place in the 19th century in Mexico, versus Yojimbo’s 1860s Japan. However, stylistically and the way that the films approach certain themes does vary greatly; the atmosphere of Yojimbo is more claustrophobic and brooding compared to the grand expanse of Mexico; death is a more somber and difficult moral issue for the nameless protagonist of Yojimbo; Clint Eastwood’s character in A Fistful of Dollars has a slightly more hashed out background and history than the Ronin in Yojimbo. Perhaps the greatest difference comes from the movie’s conclusion, with the final duels playing out much differently in tone.
Some of the best Westerns ever made have been from the subgenre of the Spaghetti Western, mainly popularized by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone.
Despite these differences, the plot and structure of the Sergio Leone film are obviously taken from Akira Kurosawa’s work. This led to a lawsuit that was eventually settled out of court, with Kurosawa gaining a 15% cut of the profits of A Fistful of Dollars and distribution rights in Korea and Japan. Sergio Leone admitted fault, stating that his producer “forgot to pay Kurosawa for the rights.” This fact should not diminish fans’ interest in A Fistful of Dollars, as it is still a masterfully crafted Spaghetti Western that sets the standard for the genre. Yojimbo is also a masterpiece of Japanese samurai cinema and deserves equal attention.