On Wed, 15 Nov 2000, Mark Sullivan wrote:
> While not taking a stand on the overall debate over
whether or not
> Yojimbo is drawn from Red Harvest (I haven't read it
recently enough to
> be sure whether or not it goes beyond surface
resemblances), I think
> it's pretty clear that Kurosawa had some knowledge
of American crime
> novels. He filmed Ed McBain's King's Ransom (as High
and Low in the
> US).
The McBain novel was a contemporary one, while Hammett's
wasn't. Not that makes any difference, but it's more likely
that "King's Ransom" was translated into Japanese in the
sixties (the movie is from 1963) than
"Red Harvest" in the fifties. But I sure don't know about the
Japanese translations of American crime fiction - when did
they start publishing them?
Having said this, Kurosawa showed great skill of capturing
the film noir mood in his "Hungry Dog" ("Nora Inu", is it
"Stray Dog" in English?) which is from 1948.
Juri
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