SOURCE: "Kurosawa's Eastern 'Western': Sanjuro and the Influence of Shane," in Film Criticism, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Fall 1983, pp. 54-65.

[Dresser is a noted writer on the subject of Japanese cinema. In the following essay, he details the structural similarities and thematic differences between Sanjuro and Shane.]

If we understand Donald Richie and Noël Burch to occupy a kind 'of co-chairmanship of Japanese film criticism in America and Europe, they share their chair uneasily. Richie stands 'for a kind of international humanism in which he seeks to understand the Japanese film from an archetypical, psycho-cultural point of view. Burch represents the side of formalism and materialism, finding the Japanese cinema to be Hollywood's "other. "Yet their respective programs converge in a significant way: they each use "Japaneseness" as a criterion of value. Films and filmmakers which manifest uniquely Japanese modes and points of view are valued above those...