Cowboy and Samurai Values and Their Exponents in the Western "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) and Its Predecessor the Samurai Movie "Yojimbo" (1961): Proposal of a Methodological Framework for Axiological Analyses of Multimodal Filmic Texts

This paper focuses on the issue of valuations and values in the chosen movies linked by the relationship of remaking. Its goal is to show that the complexity of multimodal texts, to which filmic texts and therefore remakes belong, makes it necessary to examine the axiological level of film texts too. In this way we hope to prove that the amply justified and evidenced axiological aspects of language (cf. Krzeszowski, Angels, Aspekty, Equivalence; Puzynina, “Językoznawstwo”, Język) are also a property of primarily visual film texts. Consequently, the very aspects of the relationship of remaking itself that the two films share, i.e. the fact that the film A Fistful of Dollars (1964) is a remake of Yojimbo (1961), is not examined in this paper. Instead, we restricted our attempt to showing how axiological charges and values are expressed in the process of remaking. The basis of the analysis is the compositional level and the compositional-narrative structure of filmic texts, a choice which correlates with the approach to multimodality of filmic texts described in Post (Film). The sample axiological analysis presented in the fourth section of this paper relies on the approaches of Krzeszowski (Angels, Meaning), Puzynina (“Językoznawstwo”, Język) and Post (Film). With the instruments selected from these works we underline the differences and similarities between values and axiological charges present in both films as well as their importance and impact on the overall meaning of filmic segments.