Word: warlords
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...story is presented as a phlebotomously funny parody of a Hollywood western. When the film begins, the town is divided, just as the modern world is divided, into two armed camps. In each of them, like a land-grabbing cattleman surrounded by gunmen, sits a vicious little warlord surrounded by swordsmen. Enter the hero (Toshiro Mifune), a strong, silent, shabby samurai whose sword is for hire and no questions asked. He looks the situation over: sheriff bullied, citizens cowed, streets full of corpses, business at a standstill. Grimly he reflects: "Better if all these men were dead...
Well, why not? With grisly delight the samurai sells his sword to the first warlord, promptly betrays him to the second. Three men dead. Then he betrays the second to the first. Nine men dead. Then he provokes both sides to a pitched battle. Twenty or 30 men dead and the town in ruins. By hook or crook, trick or treat, the samurai assists the slaughter until, hilariously or horribly, everybody has eliminated everybody. With a grunt of solid satisfaction, the hero survevs the vacant village and declares: "Now we'll have a little quiet in this town...
...conquest after another until even the Chamberlains in both countries could swallow no more. Shirer shows how the German generals feared that every aggressive move of the Fiihrer's would lead them into a war for which they were not ready-only to realize eventually that the "warlord's" successful bluff made their caution seem ridiculous. The big-lie technique, the phony "threats" to Germany from future victims (Austria, Czechoslovakia. Poland) are documented to the hilt. And Shirer argues that until the Russians made their pact with Hitler, the West could have stopped him cold at every point...
When American silent movies arrived in Shanghai, the brothers bought a movie camera-the "foreign devils' magic lens" -and helped build up China's huge movie market. Before long, civil war and revolution wrecked the box office. Whenever they opened a moviehouse in some warlord's domain, recalls Run Run, "the warlord's private army would invade the theater without paying, watch the film and rape the women customers...