A Solitary Samurai Born of Collaboration

That movie was followed by "Seven Samurai" (1954), among the most beloved and influential pictures of all time, which further increased the celebrity of Toshiro Mifune, who starred in both films. But Mifune's global reputation-27 years after his death, he's still Japan's most famous actor-was cemented by two Kurosawa films from the following decade: "Yojimbo" (1961) and "Sanjuro" (1962). Now, having given "Seven Samurai" an immensely satisfying 4K release in November, the Criterion Collection is doing something similar with "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro," packaging sparkling 4K restorations of them in a 4-disc box that includes the films in 4K UHD and Blu-ray forms along with commentary tracks and archival bonus features.

Kurosawa, who died at age 88 in 1998, strongly believed that good movies were also entertaining ones, and few, if any, tick both boxes as effectively as these companion pictures-each featuring Mifune as a salty, unkempt lordless samurai, or ronin, who happens upon situations that his presence alone alters fundamentally. (Though he reluctantly gives his name as Sanjuro in both films, he is effectively a nameless protagonist-something the Italian director Sergio Leone would amplify to great effect in "A Fistful of Dollars," his unauthorized 1964 remake of "Yojimbo," which made Clint Eastwood a star.)

Lest those unfamiliar with "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro," both loosely set in the mid-19th century and shot in black-and-white, think them cut from the same cloth, rest assured that each stands on its own, neither requiring viewing the other for full appreciation. In fact, "Sanjuro"-based on a novel, unlike its predecessor-was a repurposed project prompted by the unexpected success of "Yojimbo," then Kurosawa's highest-grossing effort.

"Yojimbo," memorably shot by the great cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (check out those overhead and day-for-night sequences), finds Mifune entering a windswept town so corrupt that only an innkeeper and an undertaker remain uncompromised. Sensing an opportunity, the clever swordsman, whose skills with a blade are rivaled only by his amorality, pits one group of greedy merchants and gangsters against another, until pretty much no one is left standing. That Kurosawa could accomplish this without making us revile Sanjuro is a testament to the film's quicksilver narrative and technical élan, Masaru Sato's unforgettably jazzy score and Mifune's larger-than-life portrayal, complete with an inimitable shoulder shimmy (supposedly a reaction to the fleas in Sanjuro's garments).

Yet the tone of the "sequel" couldn't be more different, even as an unmistakable continuity unites the pair. In "Sanjuro," Mifune's itinerant swordsman accidentally encounters a group of upright but naïve young men now embroiled in a plot to overthrow rightful local authority. He sets them straight with his innate common sense but finds he has to keep rescuing them from their own hotspur-like, potentially fatal ineptitude. Here, the settings are the lovely villas and even lovelier gardens of late Tokugawa Japan-all rendered with sublime good taste by Yoshiro Muraki, ultimately a four-time Oscar nominee, whose production design for both films demonstrates his extraordinary range.

Whereas Sanjuro's motives seem purely mercenary in "Yojimbo," they bend toward altruism in "Sanjuro." And though both films emphasize the comic aspects of the ronin's exploits, the latter possesses a tender heart as well, epitomized not just by Sanjuro's more tempered choices, but also by the presence of the kidnapped chamberlain's wife, played with dowager-like dignity by the enormously sympathetic silent-film actress Takako Irie.

Beyond Mifune, the films are peppered with some of the biggest names-and best-known faces-in Japanese cinema, including Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Daisuke Kato and, most important of all, Tatsuya Nakadai, who portrays Mifune's chief antagonist in both pictures with radical differentiation. His spectacular death at Sanjuro's hands is the last killing in each movie, but his dispatch in the second numbers among the most breathtaking on celluloid. Once seen, it's never forgotten.

"Sanjuro" concludes exactly as "Yojimbo" does, with Mifune sauntering off to some unknown adventure. "See ya around," he says, before walking purposefully into the middle distance, shoulders twitching in time to his character's signature musical cue. Mifune and Kurosawa would make two more films together, the modern police procedural "High and Low" (1963) and the deeply philosophical medical drama "Red Beard" (1965), whose difficult production sundered their professional and personal relationship. Models of collaborative filmmaking, "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro," especially when taken together, remind us of happier days.

Mr. Mermelstein, the Journal's classical music critic, also writes on film.