Seven Samurai

The world’s really fine movies can be the most difficult to write about, and Seven Samurai is especially hard to corral in just a few words. It delivers an experience so rewarding, the standard response to a first viewing is simply “That was great,” followed soon thereafter by “That’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.”

We love big epics presented on giant screens in brilliant color; David Lean’s  Lawrence of Arabia may take the honors in that category. But Akira Kurosawa’s old-format B&W show is as technically impressive, as artistically daring and emotionally more satisfying. Talking the average college student into sitting still to read subtitles for 3.5 hours is a lot to ask, but the UCLA screenings I remember didn’t suffer a single walk-out. At the intermission break, people stood up to talk, to express their excitement. Who knew a movie could be so engaging?

It’s a BIG story to tell.

As explained by Stuart Galbraith IV in notes included in Criterion’s insert booklet, Japanese filmmaking and Toho in particular were adventurous in 1954. ‘Art’ movies were being made to court international festival prizes, but Seven Samurai unspooled on a long-form canvas that demanded a full evening from the audience. Were similar pictures already accepted in Japan, or was Akira Kurosawa experimenting with the epic-length storytelling preferred by Fritz Lang in the silent era?

Any breathing person who can read a subtitle will find themselves transported by this show. Despite weaponry limited to swords, spears, longbows and a few ancient rifles, it holds the distinction of being the top action film of its time, with combat scenes like nothing else seen in the 1950s. It has always been popular in repertory theaters, on videotape and on disc. Criterion’s first CAV laserdisc version required 5 or six platter-flip breaks, and we still loved it.

The movie always looked good, but had considerable wear throughout and minor damage near reel changes. This restored 4K presentation is cleaner and brighter, with incidental visual problems cleared up. After 27 years in the video disc racket, the Criterion Collection’s spine numbers are presently in the 1200s and rising. Seven Samurai was there for the label’s format launch, with the spine number 2.

The semi-historical fable supposes an unlikely relationship between social classes in 16th century Japan. A farming village is targeted by a band of brigands. The bandits’ periodic raids leave the peasants forever at the brink of starvation. The village sends out four pitiful emissaries to hire a defense. With the feudal system breaking down, numerous samurai soldiers and bodyguards are unemployed. The homeless but experienced and charismatic samurai Kambei (Takashi Shimura) takes an interest in the farmers’ plight. He collects a team of worthy samurai, some of whom enlist just to fight with a leader they respect. There is no money and no glory, just a positive opportunity to use their skills. Shichiroji (Daisuke Kato) is Kambei’s old friend. Gorobei is the capable second-in-command. Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki) is cheerful in adverse situations. The most proficient of the band is the monk-like Kyuzo (Seiji Mayaguchi), a master swordsman looking to refine his ‘art.’ The least experienced samurai is Kambei’s trainee, Katsushiro (Isao Kimura).

The last of the seven is Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), an independent rascal with no status as a samurai, plus a wild personality and a serious flea problem. But Kikuchiyo’s fighting skill and criminal smarts will prove a valuable asset. He tags along with Kambei’s band until they accept him.

The bandits aren’t expected to return until the newest crops come in. Kambei has big problems to solve before he can front an effective defense. The peasant farmers fear everything. They horde supplies and hide their women. The samurai turn the village into an armed camp, patrolling the perimeter and building fences. They train the farmers for combat with spears. Katshshiro begins a touchy flirtation with farmer’s daughter Shino (second-billed Keiko Tsushima) — who has disguised herself as a boy.

Good spy work tells Kambei how many bandits they face. He paints an ink chart to mark them off as they are eliminated. An outside strike mission improves the odds but results in the first casualty to the seven. When the fighting nears, Kambei must use threats to prevent a surrender by the frightened farmers. There is no turning back: the conflict concludes in an escalating series of battles. The final desperate combat plays out in a driving rainstorm.

Forget the cultural and language gap; Kurosawa’s epic takes hold of the audience and doesn’t let go. Viewers looking for samurai swordfighting action find themselves immersed in a life & death struggle with 20+ vivid characters. The villagers know samurai as killers, and the samurai consider the villagers to be cowardly peasants. Each group learns respect for the other. Kambei’s warriors engage in battle with swords, but also excel as archers; they command squads of spear-wielding villagers.

The music of Fumiyo Hayasaka ( Rashomon) adds suspense and communicates the spirit of the defenders. The sounds of insects and birds are stressed as much as the farmers’ songs of planting and harvest. The noise of a creek and the light reflected filtered through a canopy of trees becomes a stimulant for the attraction between Shino and Katsushiro.

But the movie is not fully scored with music. The big combat scenes play only with cries of battle, the hoofbeats of horses and the din of rainfall. The struggles are very much a here-and-now reality, pitched with a heightened sense of present-tense jeopardy.

→  Toshiro Mifune is superb as the irrepressible & vulgar Kikuchiyo, whose antics at first annoy Kambei’s professionals. The cocky fighter isn’t afraid to make fun of anyone. He waves his rear end at the enemy, at least until the insult is returned with musket fire. We understand Kikuchiyo’s emotional extremes, especially when his personal secret comes out, in a scene when he helps rescue a baby.

↑  The other Japanese star most likely to be recognized is Takashi Shimura, a versatile actor often seen as a kindly scientist in Sci-fi fantasies. The mighty Kambei wields a longbow like a mythical hero, but also disguises himself as a monk to capture a thief who threatens a child. By contrast, in Kurosawa’s  Ikiru, Shimura is alternately unforgettable as a meek clerk with a fatal sickness.

An Epic painted with bold creative strokes.

Seven Samurai feels big on a theater screen, and assured editing makes it play well even on a small monitor. Kurosawa’s inspired camera direction is its most progressive aspect; in the pitched battle the camera and cutting find qualities unlike anything seen before. Kurosawa often observes action detail through telescopic lenses that reduce fierce combat chaos to left-right blurs of fast motion. The blocking is such that we never become disoriented.

This movie is also credited with one of the first creative uses of slow motion, both for action detail and to isolate key moments, like the agony of a swordplay victim. Kurosawa reportedly edited the show personally. Amid the frantic rushing about on the battlefield, little details pop up in slo-mo, tiny moments suspended in time.

Hollywood’s first attempted the technique when Sam Peckinpah tried to apply it to his  Major Dundee. But such sequences must be planned beforehand, with specific cutting patterns in mind. The precedent of Arthur Penn’s  Bonnie and Clyde encouraged the director and his creative editors to work Kurosawa-style slow motion inserts into 1969’s  The Wild Bunch. Interpolating shots taken at various high frame rates, they achieved a similar hyper-real effect.

Some Japanese critics thought Seven Samurai to be too American in style and attitude. Kurosawa’s work sometimes evokes the classics of John Ford, what with formal rituals used to define groups and loyalties. Some designs obey Ford’s avowed rule of composition, setting horizon lines either high or low in the frame … like the repeated views of the impromptu village graveyard, with swords for grave markers.  ↑

But Kurosawa’s mastery of moods is all his own, especially in sequences without a lot of dialogue. The pre-dawn raid on the bandit camp has an eerie grandeur. A late-night confrontation between Katsushiro, Shino, and her father, witnessed by all, is a major emotional trial. As an overall experience  Seven Samurai pulls us into a different, exotic world. We know and respect these people, from the cheeful samurai lieutenants to the peasant Yohei (Bozuken Hidari), a weary old coot with a face that looks like a mask of tragedy. We might gain an appreciation for the values of another culture, one with a past just as cruel and unjust as our own.

The show saw a limited U.S. release in 1955 as The Magnificent Seven. In Los Angeles it became a mini-cult item among filmmakers interested in innovative ideas. Even cut down by 50 minutes, it made an impression on Sam Peckinpah and James Coburn. Four years later, the actor was overjoyed to be cast in John Sturges’ version, which transposed the story to the to the American West.

Coburn would play the cowboy equivalent of Seiji Mayaguchi’s Kyuzo, the zen-like sword master who moves with economy and grace while slicing enemies into mincemeat. I daresay that fans of martial arts and samurai pics are most attracted to the nigh-invincible Kyuzo.  ←  So many wannabe action pictures of the ’70s and beyond proffer heroes with cartoonish personal philosophies or spiritual inspirations. Kyuzo is neither brutal nor physcially imposing: he’s a consummate artist, fully submerged in his professional function.

Actually, we do see Kyuzo smile once or twice — in this picture Akira Kurosawa gives most every character a positive, human warmth.