Some
people might be surprised to find Star
Wars: A New Hope (1977) categorized as a classic movie. Certainly it can be
difficult to look back at the original film now with a clear picture of it,
especially with the clutter of the later trilogy and the commercial juggernaut
Lucas built from the whole series crowding one's view. Nonetheless, the Star Wars that debuted in 1977 is very
much a film whose roots are deep in the classic movie tradition, and that tradition
accounts in large part for its enduring appeal.
George
Lucas borrowed heavily from one particular classic movie for his plots and
characters. Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden
Fortress (1958) has been widely cited as a major source, and, when one sees
the film, one can see the similarities quite clearly. Nobody can fault an
American director for stealing from Kurosawa, since it only shows the good
sense of the borrower in recognizing the work of a superior creative mind. John
Sturges stole from Kurosawa's The Seven
Samurai (1954) for The Magnificent
Seven (1960), and Sergio Leone stole from Yojimbo (1961) for A Fistful
of Dollars (1964). This busy borrowing was all fine because Kurosawa
himself had been pilfering Shakespeare and Dashiell Hammett, as well as the
American Western film tradition at large, for his own pictures. Lucas took the comical,
scene-stealing peasants of The Hidden
Fortress as the models for C-3PO and R2-D2, and the plot involving the
imperiled but feisty princess gave rise to the story of Princess Leia. The Japanese
film is over two hours long, and it lacks the vehicle sequences that Lucas
delights in creating, but any serious Star
Wars devotee or Kurosawa fan ought to take the time to watch The Hidden
Fortress in its entirety. It clarifies so much of what A New Hope is all about and where its loyalties to its characters
really lie (think about the fact that the droids manage to be major players in
all six movies!).
The
discussion above hints at the complex relationships between different cinematic
traditions, and Star Wars is one of
those films that form a kind of nexus where many different influences reveal
their ties to one another. Directors who made Westerns borrowed from Kurosawa,
who was himself borrowing from the older Westerns, and Lucas borrowed from both
of them. Samurai movies and cowboy pictures have a lot in common, and Star Wars functions as both
simultaneously. The Jedi are more like samurai in their strict codes and
rejection of blasters in favor of lightsabers, but they also have a strong
gunslinger aspect in their larger-than-life abilities and engagement of danger.
Obi-Wan Kenobi's name sounds more sensei than sheriff, but he's also a lot like
an older John Wayne hero, who shows the kid the ropes and goes down to make way
for a new generation. Think about Wayne in a film like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), for example, or The Shootist (1976). The dusty scenes of
Tatooine are as much Tombstone as Tunesia (where they were actually shot), with
the bar fight simply a more exotic saloon where the new cowboy in town inevitably
gets into a fight. Certainly one can see the Western influence in the character
of Han Solo; he's almost a space version of Hondo
(1953) with a Wookie instead of a dog. He's the classic drifter whose better
nature eventually gets the upper hand, in spite of his intention to remain
detached, just like so many of the gamblers, gunslingers, and rough riders who
populate the classic Western landscape.
Star Wars is nominally
science fiction, although some might counter that real science fiction has to speculate
about the future and the changes brought by technology and events (I would
agree with them, and I think it is more appropriate to call Star Wars a fantasy). However, the
science fiction vibe of Star Wars
also comes from its classic movie roots, this time in the form of matinee
serials from the 1930s and 1940s. Flash
Gordon (1936) comes immediately to mind, but one also has to look at Gene
Autry's 1935 Phantom Empire serial,
which obviously connects with the name of the later Star Wars installment, The
Phantom Menace (1999). Autry was making a cowboy sci-fi series forty years
before Lucas made his picture, and again the genres reveal their connections to
one another in terms of plots, themes, and characters.
Finally,
add in performances from classic movie stalwarts like Sir Alec Guinness and
Peter Cushing to leaven the energy of the largely newcomer cast. They give a
certain gravitas to the film; Guinness lends class and a touch of dry English
humor, while Cushing brings classic horror menace and serpentine intelligence.
Guinness might not have liked the resulting fervor for Star Wars, but he helped to create it with his brilliant work, and
nobody could project urbane evil better than Peter Cushing, except perhaps
Christopher Lee, who would get his own turn as a Star Wars villain some twenty years after his longtime horror
costar. These kinds of casting choices indicate Lucas's deep affection for and
awareness of classic films and their stars. Even Carrie Fisher brought ties to
that world into Star Wars; the
daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds was a Hollywood princess, indeed.
I
realize that some classic movie lovers might scratch their heads over the
appeal of a picture like Star Wars,
but there's a lot here for a classic film fan to love. Lucas' original movie was
a love letter to the films that he himself loved, classic films and forgotten
gems from another era. Mix all of those elements up with a hefty dose of Joseph
Campbell and you get a film that is at once startlingly new and deeply
familiar. It is so many things at once, but all of its parts were forged from
the fine materials of classic movies. Go watch the original 1977 version again,
and, this time, do it with the classics in mind.
This review was originally published on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.
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