Clint Eastwood Didn't Mince Words About Akira Kurosawa's Oscar-Winning Classic

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One of Clint Eastwood's more popular movies — Sergio Leone's 1964 Western "A Fistful of Dollars" — was an unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai film "Yojimbo." I write "unofficial," as Leone didn't give any kind of credit to Kurosawa, despite "Fistful" being nearly identical to "Yojimbo" in many ways. Whether or not Leone intentionally tried to rip off Kurosawa remains a matter of speculation, but the Italian filmmaker later admitted that it was just a production mistake. He said that his producer merely forgot to pay Kurosawa for the rights to his story. 

Whatever Leone's intentions, Toho sued. Kurosawa was quoted as saying that "A Fistful of Dollars" was "a very fine movie, but it was my movie." Toho ended up getting 15% of the gross, and an additional $100,000 besides.

"A Fistful of Dollars" star Clint Eastwood was, of course, familiar with the similarities between "Fistful" and "Yojimbo," and seemed to be a Kurosawa fan in general. At least, Eastwood was a fan of Kurosawa's work from the 1950s and 1960s — the stuff from the '70s, not so much. Eastwood declared as much in the interview book "Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983." It seems that Eastwood had been asked in the early 1980s about some of the great directors he was contemporaries with, notably Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish master. Eastwood noted that Bergman used to be great, but that he was coasting on critical good will in the '80s. 

He then noted that he felt the same way about Akira Kurosawa. Eastwood praised the director's films "Seven Samurai" and "Red Beard," but said outright that he hated Kurosawa's 1975 film "Dersu Uzala." This is a baffling take, as the film is great, and it won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The significance of "Dersu Uzala" cannot be understated. It essentially revived Kurosawa's career and, some might say, saved his life. Back in 1971, Akira Kurosawa shot his first film in color, "Dodes'ka-Den," as proof to a new generation of filmmakers that, yes, great work can be made on a budget and shot on a brief shooting schedule. Sadly, Kurosawa didn't prove his points very well, as "Dodes'ka-Den" tanked at the box office. It threw Kurosawa deep into depair — he was already wrestling with depression, and he attempted to take his own life. 

Luckily, a Russian film company reached out to Kurosawa about adapting Vladimir Klavdiyevich Arsenyev's memoir "Dersu Uzala" to the big screen. It was the right project at the exact right time. The film followed Arsenyev and a special topography mission that he and several men took to the Siberian region of Russia back in the 1910s. The title character, played by Maxim Munzuk, was an expert in wilderness survival, and helped Arsenyev and his men survive in the harsh Siberian weather, teaching them to live in harmony with the woods. 

Eastwood hated it, saying: 

"I loved Kurosawa's work. I didn't like 'Dersu Uzala.' I thought that was terrible, except it had a nice wind sequence in it. But I thought the early stuff; 'Red Beard' (which wasn't too early), going back through the years to 'Seven Samurai' and 'Yojimbo,' — which we remade as 'A Fistful of Dollars,' or made a version of — were really great visual things. He had the great combination of being able to do a visual picture and have his characters come to life. You wanted to know them."

But what was missing from "Dersu Uzala" that made Eastwood not think it was as good as Kurosawa's other movies?

Clint Eastwood implied that "Dersu Uzala" didn't succeed on either a character level or a visual level. He doesn't delve too much into the particulars of the film, but theorizes that even the greatest masters of the craft are never going to churn out a body of work that is 100% bangers:

"[A] lot of times you get one or the other: you get somebody who's very good with the character thing and not with the visual, or very good with the visual and spectacle part, but you can't ever get into the people. But it's everybody for a particular film or whatever group of films. The mark of a good director, of course, is what the body of his work is worth overall. Not just a flick. how it turns out over the years. Naturally some of them are going to stand heads above others just by the nature of spirit and all the components coming together. It's half talent/half luck or fate or whatever you want to call it." 

Elsewhere in the same interview, Eastwood also admitted to disliking the then-recent "Kagemusha" (released in 1980), preferring Kurosawa's movies from 30 years earlier. He continued:

"I didn't like ['Kagemusha']. But some of his earlier things were just really fabulous. 'Rashomon' was really good. I haven't liked any of his last works. But I loved his period Samurai." 

Clint Eastwood turns 96 on March 31, so he still has time to catch up with Kurosawa again. Perhaps he can give "Dersu Uzala" another chance, and maybe throw in a re-watch of "Kagemusha" while he's at it. These are actually great movies.