Juri Nummelin:
> 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.
Then again, did McBain really have any status as a
"real" author back then? I of course don't know how he was
regarded in Japan, but in Sweden he was essentially unknown
in 1963 -- just another one of all those obscure paperback
hacks. Hammett, OTOH, might very well have been regarded as a
classic.
> 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.
There's also the one with Toshiro Mifune as a gangster with
tuberculosis, whatever the English title is. Fine
stuff.
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