Notes on Kurasawa’s Sanjuro

The original Japanese trailer for Akira Kurasawa’s Sanjuro (included on the DVD) has a jaunty, brassy theme, lots of tubas and trumpets. The star studded cast parades in front of the camera, but not before we’ve seen a shot of Akira Kurasawa, actually directing the movie. I’ve never seen that in a preview before. It’s a very strange shot: Mifune and the main bad samarai are going through a stunt, but we’re seeing it from the reverse angle (the director and all the crew are in the background, in their suits and jackets and stuff), while the fight goes on in the foreground. After they finish pounding the hell out of some hapless soldier, Kurasawa steps forward and directs the actors to do it again, but with more cowbell, or something. This shot had to have been done strictly for the preview, since otherwise the camera we’re watching from would be right in the background for the scene being shot for the movie; in fact, I don’t think there even was a camera that Kurasawa was directing. They must have just shot the same scene but put the camera opposite where it had been, so they could film AK and the crew being AK and crewing.

Other notes:

–Toshiro Mifune is the most body conscious actor I‘ve ever seen. What is it with that guy? If he’s not scratching his chest under his clothing he’s rubbing his eyes or firing snot rockets into the bushes. It’s in character, of course, but it’s pretty over the top at times, like he’s got a bad case of exzema or something. I guess its supposed to be for the role, though he‘s like that in a lot of movies. Wish I knew something about body mores in Japan, especially if they were different back then. But I don’t.

–Kurasawa knows how to end a movie. By that point, dozens and dozens of people have been hacked up with swords but since they all die completely bloodless deaths, it’s nice to end the movie with the old plasma-geyser from the chest. As he’s lying there in the dust, it looks like a sewer backing up; being a samarai villain must’ve given him very high blood pressure.

–Why is the American version called Sanjuru, when the name of the original Japanese version was the full name of Mifune’s character, Tsubaki Sanjuru? Too complicated, since we’re not going to know the meaning anyway?

–That’s all. Unlike Kurasawa’s films, this post ends with a whimper. If you want to see what a real review of this movie would look like, go here.