“A Fistful of Dollars” from Sergio Leone, which was a nearly shot-for-shot remake of “Yojimbo” by Akira Kurosawa was never authorized by Toho/Kurosawa. The letter Kurosawa sent to Leone contained the line ‘I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it’s my movie.’.

How Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’ Became Leone’s ‘Fistful of Dollars’

His name might not mean much to Joe Moviegoer, but among a certain kind of cinephile, Stephen Prince is a legend. Others may know their Kurosawa, but Prince wrote a brilliant deep-dive on the great Japanese director’s films (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa), although his movie-geek street cred is mostly due to his Criterion Collection audio commentaries, which appear on the DVDs and Blu-rays for pretty much every Kurosawa film they’ve released–including Yojimbo, which was the one that brought us together. Last weekend, I had the honor of talking to Prince about Yojimbo at the Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita, Kansas (one of our favorite under-the-radar film fests). Specifically, we discussed the link between that film a… Continue Reading (3 minute read)