In the 1933 it starts with a harpischord, and then into a full ensemble. However, in the 1949 it starts with an ensemble and ends with a harpischord.
Maybe the 1933’s version’s crescendo was to uplift people’s spirits at the beginning of the movie since it was shown during the Great Depression. Whereas the decrescendo in the 1949 was to bring people down a little form the post-was prosperity, so they could be in a better frame of mind to the view the economic state of the family.

After some thorough unscientific research, I’ve come to the assumption/conclusion that death in the 1860s happened suddenly or even “very suddenly”, as opposed to the long dying process that Beth seemed to endure in Little Women. My “sample” came form list obituraries of small rural newspapers in Virginia which can be found here.

Also, in my research (googling), I found a website that further supports the hypothesis that sudden death was common in the 1860s. It seems that often when people died suddenly the families would hire a photographer to take a picture of the deceased often because there would be no photogrpahic record of the person otherwise. A link to this website is here. WARNING: there are dead babies, but they look very peaceful.

So obviously Beth’s slow death in the story was purposeful. I believe Alcott chose not to “kill off” Beth so abrubtly because she wanted it to be more impactful. It had to be long to represent how long women were trapped in the mold of Beth. With Beth’s death a more “old-fashioned heroine” was dying, which gave rise to the “new heroine” — Jo.

Instead of making the comparision between Ed and Sanjuro, I wanted to point out the character similarities that struck me as I watched Yojimbo. I found it interesting the similiarities between Janet Henry and the matriarch of the Seibei clan (sorry I can’t remember her name and couldn’t find it on imdb). They both appeared intelligent and to some extent running their families from within (more so on the Seibei matriarch.) However they both end up being underminded to different extents (Janet is just proved wrong, the Seibei matriarch is chopped up by Sanjuro.)

I don’t know if this was done purposely by the director of Yojimbo, but it’s very interesting to me. Also, could someone enlighten me if there is a name for this type of character female or not?