Even before Yojimbo there was Dasheill Hammet's Red Harvest(1929)which tells a tale of inter gang warfare in a small town with a private dick in the middle. Why not simply make a movie based on that book instead of all these derivations?
shareWell my guess would be that Kurosawa didn't have access to the resources in early 1960s Japan to recreate 1920s America. Also he was probably mindful of his intended audience (again in Japan) who would've taken to more "familiar" feudal Japan-era settings and costumes. Similarly for Leone, I think budget probably dictated the locations, costumes, cast, etc.
Given how "poorly" LMS did on initial release it'll probably be quite some time before someone will attempt another retelling of this story.
I'd also note that there seems to have long been a Western bent to the interpretation of Red Harvest - Buchanan Rides Alone from '58 (based on a Jonas Ward novel from '56) - and also excellent - is pretty much the same plot as Sanjuro/fistful/LMS.
I do suppose it's an archetypal story, a variation on the "man goes into a town, changes the town" paradigm.
It has also turned up again in hard boiled fiction in Vernon Warren's masterful "Mister Violence", which plays (broadly) as part Red Harvest, part The Glass Key.
And it's The Glass Key that Miller's Crossing is most closely based upon. Compare with Stuart Heisler's version to see how many scenes and discussions are elaborated upon in typical Cohen style.
I think LMS is Walter Hill's masterpice and would have loved to see his take on Sanjuro (which I prefer of the two Kurosawa films). Sadly, its commercial failure made this impossible. Glad I caught it at the cinema on initial release.
I am a screenwriter and Red Harvest is one of the books I've considered adapting. Pretty kick ass.
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I just finished reading "Red Harvest" and I think it would be tremendously difficult to turn into a film. Too many gangs, too many important characters, too many plot twists that make sense in the novel but would be hard to explain on the big screen.
Kurosawa reduced the story to its essential elements and to a handful of important characters, and in my opinion made a much better film than if he had tried to adapt the original story. Both before and after "Yojimbo" he made some contemporary gangster movies and they were okay, but not in the category of film classics.
As I noted in another thread, the only direct borrowings I could spot were: 1) the main character's real name is never revealed, and 2) one of the gang hideouts is fire-bombed and a gang leader is shot down as he tries to surrender. Nothing else from "Red Harvest" seems to have made it to "Yojimbo". And the entire subplot with the woman hostage with the kid, who is rescued and returned to her husband, does not appear in "Red Harvest". Also, the main character is never imprisoned or beat up or interrogated, though he does escape at least two attempts on his life.
mmintz...im still waiting patiently for ur adaption of red harvest since i think that would be a much better film than this mess, and with a really good director and even better actor than willis in the lead...it will rock, im certain of it...i would rly like to see a remake or an new adaption of this. The only thing that worries me today is the bad cgi effects...these "gun movies" require more old blood squibs effects to work, bad cgi and a pg-13 rating wouldnt do an adaption of red harvest any justice.
~If the realistic details fails, the movie fails~
_Red Harvest_ is one of my favorite books and would love to see the Coens make it in to a movie. Bruce Willis would make a great Continental op.
shareBernardo Bertolucci was planning an adaptation of 'Red Harvest' sometime in the 1980'. Warren Beatty was to play the lead. It never happened.
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