The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai)

Released: April 26, 1954

Studio: Toho

Genre: action/foreign

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 0.27 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: ? Worldwide: ?

Directing: Akira Kurosawa

Screenwriting: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni

Starring: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Kato

Review:

Subtitled, black-and-white films tend to make the general population groan. However, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai proved that “it’s not just white men who can stage action with panache.” ^PM In fact, many have tried to “copy Kurosawa – to lesser effect.” ^PM His “epic Western in eastern garb” ^T98 “has served as model for many films since, including American remake The Magnificent Seven,” ^LM Battle Beyond the Stars and arguably A Bug’s Life and The Avengers. ^E18 “Cinema simply wouldn’t be the same without it.” ^E18

Of course, “Kurosawa’s masterpiece” ^T95 is itself a testament “to his admiration for John Ford,” ^T95 perhaps the most celebrated director of Westerns, though Ford “probably never filmed action – let alone mud and rain – quite so well.” ^T98 “The epic action scenes involving cavalry and samurai are still without peer.” ^T95

Seven Samurai tells the tale of a “16th-century Japanese village which hires professional warriors to fend off” ^LM “a helpless village against a ferocious gang of bandits.” ^T95 The noble men do so “for no pay, just food and the joy of fulfilling their duty as fighters.” ^T95

The film is filled with “a genuinely Homeric sense of character, nature and physicality.” ^T98 “The individual characterizations are precise and memorable, none more so than that by Takashi Shimura, one of the director’s favorite actors, playing the sage, ageing, and oddly charismatic samurai leader.” ^T95 There’s also Mifune “as unrestrained energy incarnate.” ^T98 He isn’t technically a samurai, but a “crazy farmer’s boy not qualified to join the elect group, who nevertheless follows like a dog and fights like a lion.” ^T95