#53 - Sanjuro

#53 is the follow up to Yojimbo - the entertaining sequel called Sanjuro

Many of the same actors and production team are in both movies - In face, we have the same guys playing the villians, including Tatsuya Nakadai.   The interesting transition is that this time we have left the lawless world of bandits in a town and moved to the formal world of the Samurai and a corrupt administrator.   Sanjuro takes it upon himself to help a number of young samurai attempt to flush out the corruption.

In that regard it's a totally different vibe - the young samurai now look at him like the ruffian and gangsters from the first movie - he is unkempt, undisciplined, and shocking to them at times.   The Swordplay at times is excellent, and the ending is one of those eye openers the first time you catch it.

Interestingly, I learned that Tatsuya filmed his roles in these two films in breaks between parts 2 and 3 of The Human Condition, a 9 hr. epic that spanned 3 films.   Suffice it to say, now that he had gotten a chance to act for Kurosawa, he was going to work his tail off to make it happen, and he would be one of Akira's goto guys in the later samurai epics Kagemusha and Ran.

The commentary is interesting - Stephen Prince goes out of his way to highlight some of the most interesting parts of the story - in both these films, Kurosawa makes great use of the telephoto lens to flatten the action and allow you to see large amounts of in focus detail. 

Mifune would go on to play a similar character two more times - in "Zatoichi meets Yojimbo" and in "Incident at Blood Pass" but not the same one.   Nevertheless, the archtype of the scruffy ronin was one he did to great effect, and of course, he would play regular Samurai in many other period pieces, as well as a multitude of contemporary roles

I don't remember if I've spoken in detail yet about Tatsuya Nakadai, but at some point he will come up again and we can talk about him more - suffice it to say he's not usually a villian, but in these two films, he runs the gamut from crazy bandit to noble, but corrupted retainer.

Two great widescreen movies that can be found in a complementary box set with some extra documentaries, commentaries, and features.