The film is directed by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Tsushima among others. It is set in 16th Century Japan, and tells the story of a poor farming village beset by a group of bandits, who plunder their crops and abduct their women. A few villages go to the nearest town to seek help from samurai in return for the meagre payment of bed and board; most samurai consider the terms insulting and rebuff them. Finally, they meet a master-less samurai, a ronin, and he agrees to help them fight the bandits, so long as they can find seven more to follow him.
A Classic of World Cinema
This film is definitely a classic of world cinema, and as such deserves well its place among the British Film Institute's selection of World Classics and its status as number one in Empire's The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema1: it has at least seven great actors, great characterization and great action sequences, a great score and great peaks and deep troughs of the human spirit. This is a tremendous, terrific, thrilling film.
(spoilers maybe found below)
I thought the score for the film was excellent. I particularly liked the theme near the beginning of the film, which established the samurai in the town, as it was very stirring, bold and strong. The theme was repeated almost every time the samurai were in other scenes. I thought that it was used well as a motif for the samurai; it seems to describe them well.
Although much about the scores for both the Seven Samurai and its American remake are a product of the two cultures, for instance the choice of instruments, there are parts of the scores that seemed to me to be very similar: the rousing theme that introduces the Samurai in Kurosawa's film made me think of the main theme that introduces the Magnificent Seven, which was very interesting.
I thought Toshirô Mifune's performance was most enjoyable as the lively and spirited samurai Kikuchiyo. It seemed to me that there was a great energy and movement to his actions, which according to what I learned from the film and a video essay on the DVD, seems to befit his character. Kikuchiyo was probably a farmer's son who found a samurai sword and tries to become one, and thus is trying to emulate what he has observed of the samurai class but he remains both a farmer's son and samurai, until the final scene where, I think, he proves himself a samurai.
It was fascinating to see the original inspiration for the Magnificent Seven, and to spot the similarities and differences between the two films.
The quality of black and white (monochrome) film from the 1950s struck me as quite a breath of fresh air—from the past. It seems to me that there is something about the lack of colour, perhaps also the lack of fine detail, which stimulates the imagination even more so than High Definition colour film may ever do, something that I have also found in monochrome line drawings. I really enjoyed the way in which Kurosawa ingeniously shoots the samurai running from a distance with a telephoto lens; there is a great energy within this type of shot, which reminds me of some panels in Japanese manga.
This film was a very enjoyable three hours ten minutes and has stood the test of time. Its score is great and stirring, with excellent performances, direction and photography.
1. Empire. "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema". From Empire Online Accessed on: 08 May 2012