The Cinematheque

“[An] important landmark in the director’s career—if not for its devilish hybrid of styles, inversion of genre conventions, and sly political commentary, then certainly for sheer entertainment value … A textbook example of the perfect crowd-pleaser.”

Rob Humanick, Slant Magazine

Mifune Toshiro was named Best Actor at Venice for his spirited performance in Yojimbo, a jaw-droppingly kinetic jidaigeki (period drama) that has been called ​“Kurosawa’s most commanding film … A visually faultless and highly sophisticated satire on violence and human weakness” (Peter John Dyer, Sight and Sound). Mifune plays Sanjuro (literally ​“30-year-old man”), a scruffy, unheroic ronin who, wandering into a town divided by civil war between a silk merchant and a sake merchant, sees an opportunity to profit—by hiring himself out as a yojimbo (bodyguard) to both sides. The film is beautifully photographed in TohoScope by the great cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo (Rashomon, Ugetsu), and abounds in brilliantly choreographed sword-swinging violence. Its box-office success in Japan led to Sanjuro, a sequel also featuring Mifune; it also serves as the blueprint for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“A triumph of bravura technique … Explosively comic and exhilarating.”

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

“It’s just my favourite movie … Yojimbo is not purely a comedy, though it isn’t tragic either … and it demonstrates an understanding of how to mix a broad range of acting styles. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen where that mix works.”

John Sayles, director (Lone Star)