Looking through the lens of pop culture, it can sometimes seem like the Spaghetti Western genre begins and ends with Sergio Leone. The same lens can also reduce the samurai genre to the work of Akira Kurosawa. Not that being so completely defined by two masters of cinema is such a bad thing, but those kinds of associations can spoil a lot of quality work and narrow the “acceptable” parameters of a given genre. It can also obscure the overlay, and Westerns of all stripes have a surprisingly symbiotic relationship with samurai pictures. John Ford inspired Kurosawa, Kurosawa inspired Leone (among others), and changing tastes in the 1970s produced a number of hybrid stories that combined Western elements with Asian martial arts if not specifically samurai. It was there Kung Fu with David Carradine on the small screen. It wasn’t notorious enough Billy Jack and its continuation even more doubtful. And it was the Franco-Italian of 1971 The Red Sun.
If your genre glasses are too narrow, The Red Sun it must look like a weird movie. It’s a Spaghetti Western starring Charles Bronson – quite straightforward, but his co-star is Toshirof Mifune, and he speaks English. It’s a Western that devotes considerable time to diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan, not to lone gunmen, cowboys and Indians (though there are Comanches) or intrigue along the southern border. The villain is played by a Frenchman, the female lead is Swiss-German, and at the helm was one of the most English English directors, the director of James Bond. Terence Young. Too little for The Red Sun it makes sense on paper, including the circumstances behind its production. But underneath, it’s all a fairly traditional quest with undertones of a comedy, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Who was the target demographic for ‘Red Sun’?
Thinking back The Red Sun seems to have been the same thinking with many international co-productions of the 1960s and 1970s: get as many people into theaters as possible by appealing to as many distribution territories as possible with international stars. In its subject matter and production value, The Red Sun perhaps aiming a little higher than some of his contemporaries. The plot, credited to him This Bart Petitclerc, William RobertsAND Lawrence Roman for the scenario and Laird Koenig for the story, initiated by the producer Ted Richmond. He came across a story about a disgraced samurai visiting America and saw a movie in it. Initial preparation began in 1966 with a target launch date for the following year.
Toshirō Mifune was the first actor recruited for the film. By that time in his career, he had 16 collaborations with Kurosawa under his belt and a high reputation in Japan. The success of films like Rednessomon AND Seven Samurai abroad gave him a worldwide fan base and offers from American, British and European studios. Having never learned English, Mifune learned his lines for such projects phonetically. IN The Red Sun, that meant playing the tough, stubborn and honorable Kuroda Jubei, as archetypal a portrayal of a samurai hero as they come. There is hardly a stretch for Mifune at that point in his career, and yet Kuroda stands out from his life at the end of the samurai era. If the Meiji Restoration hadn’t begun until 1860 (the year the film takes place), Japan’s rapid evolution into an industrialized nation with diplomatic relations with the US meant that the feudal system that supported the samurai was dying. Kuroda, the last of a long line of warriors, is resigned to this fate, but determined to honor his legacy by retrieving the stolen ceremonial sword intended as a gift to Abraham Lincoln.
Had director Young made his first choice in casting Kuroda’s foil, Link Stuart’s sardonic thug, Mifune would have spent The Red Sun becoming friends with his doppelganger. This choice was Clint EastwoodLeone’s Man With No Name which owed him the part Jojimbo-flowed A handful of dollars. But it wasn’t to be, and Charles Bronson stepped into the part with long hair and a drooping moustache. Westerns had made Bronson’s career, Leone’s Once upon a time in the West Among them. The same parts made it a hit in Japan as well. “One of the ironies is that I made my discovery in films shot in Europe that the Japanese thought were American films and that the Americans thought were foreign,” he once said.
Eastwood has range and comedic chops, and the thought of him and Mifune going head-to-head as foes-turned-friends is undeniably appealing. But if he was asked to rely on his “Man With No Name” persona, it would have gone The Red Sun without much contrast between Link and Kuroda. The Nameless Star i dollars trilogy also wasn’t as stealthy as Link is at the beginning of the movie. He is the nogoodnik of the main pair, the thief betrayed by other thieves who only wants his gold (and not to be killed by his samurai guard). But he maintains a sense of humor on his journey after the villains, and along the way, he takes a liking to Kuroda and comes to respect and even honor the ethos of the samurai. Bronson may not be Mifune’s doppelganger, but he has great chemistry with him and sells Link’s arc in a wonderfully subtle way.
What was the production like on the set of ‘Red Sun’?
Bronson and Mifune were hired for star power; Young was hired because he knew his way around an action scene and three languages. Japanese was not one of them, but he could talk to him Alain Delon in fluent French, the local teams in Madrid and Almeria in Spanish, and the Italian partners in – well, Italian. He and Bronson also had an established working relationship, despite Young initially wanting Eastwood as Link.
1967 proved impossible for filming. The cameras wouldn’t be rolling The Red Sun by 1971, by which time the film had transitioned from a Warner Bros.-backed project to a co-production between Richmond and France’s Les Films Corona, with other partners from Italy. All that prep time didn’t make the working relationship between Young and Richmond go any smoother once filming began. The two were at constant odds and the feuds were bad enough to derail plans for future collaborations.
But if the producer and director spent the shoot fighting, the production ran smoothly otherwise. Bronson brought his entire family on set, and Mifune traded recipes while cooking in front of the crew. Young people recruited James Bond’s friends Anthony Dawson AND Ursula Andres in the cast, the latter as Cristina, the female lead (or as close to the male companion story as there is one) and girlfriend of Delon’s villain. Anyone who cringes at the way Spaghetti Westerns sometimes treat female characters won’t find any relief here, and the story can’t seem to decide how charming or manipulative Cristina wants to be. But Andress works well with what she has and loved the film and the locations so much that she bought a house in Spain.
Delon didn’t buy a house. He was not on location constantly, having commitments to return to France. His villain, Gauche, is a classic mustache twirler without the mustache, but he gives Link another counter to Kuroda. The two were once co-leaders of a gang of bandits, and Link is unwashed, unshaven, weather-beaten, and the worst to look at of the two. But aside from his profession, he is a loving boy who finds redemption through his friendship with Kuroda. The charmingly pure, impeccably dressed gauche has no redeeming qualities. And Delon’s intense eyes and wicked grins sell it perfectly. Of course, the standard black hat doesn’t hurt either.
A smooth shoot doesn’t always equate to a great or even good movie, but in this case it did. As odd as it may seem on paper, this Spaghetti Western starring a Japanese superstar and a French heartthrob as a villain with the James Bond director, all in The Red Sun gel nicely. The story it tells is straightforward. The mission is clear, Bronson’s humor lands, the bittersweet nature of Kuroda’s mission registers, and everything moves at a brisk but never rushed clip. And while its unique elements may exclude it from being a definitive example of a Western – or a samurai film – they give it a wonderful flavor that’s worth breaking out of rigid genre conventions.