Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

But something about Yojimbo , beyond Mifune, beyond the story, spoke to Cliff. And he thought that extra element might be Kurosawa. His third Kurosawa film proved the first two weren’t a fluke. Throne of Blood knocked his socks off. He was a little concerned when he heard it was based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Cliff never responded to Shakespeare (though he wished he did). Now, Cliff was usually a little bored when he watched a movie. If he wanted excitement, he’d drive laps at a track or he’d run a dirt bike through a motocross course. But with Throne of Blood , he was fully absorbed . Once he saw the image of Mifune, filmed in charcoal black and white, in full military armor, covered in a hundred arrows, it was official: Cliff Booth was an Akira Kurosawa fan.

After the violence the world was subjected to during the forties, the fifties were all about emotional melodrama. Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, the Actors Studio, Playhouse 90. And in every way, Akira Kurosawa was a perfect director for the turgid fifties, the era his most renowned string of films appeared in. American film critics embalmed Kurosawa in praise early, elevating his melodramas into high art, partly because they didn’t understand them. Cliff felt that after fighting the Japanese as long as he did, and being their captive during a time of war, he understood Kurosawa’s films far better than any critic he ever read. Cliff felt Kurosawa had an innate gift for staging drama, melodrama, and pulp, as well as a comic-book illustrator’s talent (Cliff was a big Marvel comics fan) for framing and composition. As far as Cliff was concerned, no director he’d ever seen had composed shots with more dynamic wit than “the Old Man” (what Cliff called the filmmaker). But Cliff felt where the American critics got it wrong was referring to the director as a “fine artist.” Kurosawa didn’t start out as a fine artist. Originally, he worked for a living. He was a working man, who made movies for other working men. He wasn’t a fine artist , but he had a sensational talent for staging drama and pulp artistically.

But even the Old Man was susceptible to falling for his own notices. By the mid-sixties, with Red Beard , the Old Man would change from Kurosawa the movie director to Kurosawa the Russian novelist.

Cliff didn’t walk out of Red Beard , out of respect for his once-favorite movie director. But later, when he learned that it was how darn ponderous the Old Man became on Red Beard that prompted Toshiro Mifune to vow to stop working with Kurosawa, Cliff took Mifune’s side.

CLIFF’S TOP KUROSAWA FILMS

1. (tie) Seven Samurai and Ikiru

2. Yojimbo

3. Throne of Blood

4. Stray Dog

5. The Bad Sleep Well (for the opening scene alone)

Cliff’s connection and devotion (though he would never call it that) to Japanese cinema wasn’t limited to just Kurosawa and Mifune.

While he didn’t know the names of other directors, he really liked Three Outlaw Samurai , The Sword of Doom , Hara-Kiri , and Goyokin . And later, in the seventies, he adored Shintaro Katsu’s Blind Swordsman character, Zatoichi. So much so that, for a while, Katsu replaced Mifune as Cliff’s favorite actor. And Cliff went fucking gaga over Katsu’s brother’s film series Baby Cart from Hell , especially the second one, Baby Cart at the River Styx. In the seventies, he also saw that wild, sexy Japanese movie where the chick cuts the guy’s dick off, In the Realm of the Senses (he took a couple of different dates to that movie). He also dug the first of Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter movies (the one where he rips the black guy’s cock off). But when he went to the Vista to see Mifune’s Samurai Trilogy (all three on one Sunday afternoon), he was so bored that he didn’t see another Japanese film for two years.

But there were a lot of foreign filmmaking heavyweights of the fifties and sixties Cliff wasn’t enamored with. He tried Bergman but wasn’t interested (too boring). He tried Fellini and really responded at first. He could have done without all his wife’s Chaplin bullshit. In fact, he could have done without his wife altogether. But he liked the early black-and-white films a lot. But once Fellini decided life was a circus , Cliff said arrivederci .

He tried Truffaut twice, but he didn’t respond to him. Not because the films were boring (they were), but that wasn’t the only reason Cliff didn’t respond. The two films he watched (in a Truffaut double feature) just didn’t grab him. The first film, The 400 Blows , left him cold. He really didn’t understand why that little boy did half the shit he did. Now, Cliff never spoke to anybody about it, but if he did, his first case in point would be when the kid prays to Balzac . Is that something French kids do? Is the point that that’s normal or is the point he’s a little weirdo? Yes, he knows it could be meant to be the same as an American kid putting a picture of Willie Mays on his wall. But he doesn’t think it’s supposed to be that simple. Also, it seems absurd. A ten-year-old little boy loves Balzac that much? No, he doesn’t. Since the little boy is supposed to be Truffaut, it’s Truffaut telling us how impressive he is. And frankly, the kid on-screen wasn’t impressive in the slightest. And he definitely didn’t deserve a movie made about him.

And he thought the mopey dopes in Jules and Jim were a fucking drag. Cliff didn’t dig Jules and Jim , because he didn’t dig the chick. And it’s the kind of movie, if you don’t dig the chick , you ain’t gonna dig the flick. Cliff thought the movie would have been better all the way around if they just let that bitch drown.

Since Cliff was a big fan of provocation, he dug I Am Curious (Yellow) , and not just the sex shit. Once he got used to it, he liked the political discourse as well. He loved the film’s black-and-white photography. Breathless looked as artful as combat footage. But this was so monochromatic and luminous that Cliff wanted to lick the screen, especially whenever the girl Lena was on it. The (sorta) story of I Am Curious (Yellow) is about a twenty-two-year-old college student named Lena, played by twenty-two-year-old actress Lena Nyman, who is dating a forty-four-year-old filmmaker named Vilgot, played by the film’s forty-four-year-old director, Vilgot Sjöman.

Both Lena’s (the real Lena and the screen Lena) are starring in Vilgot’s new movie. At first, the movie goes back and forth between Lena and Vilgot and footage of the pseudo-political provocation documentary that they’re making together. Miss Himmelsteen was a little confused by that at first, and so was Cliff. But pretty soon he got the hang of it, and Cliff found it challenging in a way that made him feel clever for getting on the film’s wavelength. Cliff assumed the filmmaker was using his randy college-student girlfriend as his on-screen pretty face and puppet. Yet right off the bat, Vilgot tosses her in the middle of some very stimulating political discussions and debates. Early footage of Vilgot’s movie consists of Lena, armed with a microphone and a handheld camera, practically assaulting Swedish bourgeois citizens on the street with her accusatory questions (“What are you personally doing to end the class system in Sweden?”). Cliff thought some of it was monotonous, and some of it went over his head, but overall he found the film engaging.

He especially got involved with a discussion about the role and the necessity of the Swedish military in today’s society. The debate is conducted on the street, with a group of young Swedish military cadets and a group of other young Swedish people, who feel all Swedish citizens should refuse military service and work a mandatory four-year service for peace. Cliff thought both sides made good points and was glad to see neither side get mad at the other.