Classic Japanese Cinema Discussion Thread

Time to finally crack this open!

Seven Samurai (1954) 9.

“This is the nature of war:By protecting others you save yourself,if you think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself.”

Spanning across two disc, Criterion present a pristine transfer,with the film being supported by two detailed audio commentaries,and a third DVD packed with interviews.

Spreading the 148 shooting days across the entire year,with the studio fearing a disaster as production went four times over the original budget on what would become the title with the longest run time to come from the film maker, editor/ co-writer/(with regular collaborators of this era Shinobu Hashimoto & Hideo Oguni) directing auteur Akira Kurosawa reunites with cinematographer Asakazu Nakai and lays out the battleground canvas in long panning shots across the farmland.

Charging to a superb score from regular composer Fumio Hayasaka, (the last completed score for a Kurosawa movie he would do,before dying of tuberculous in 1955 at 41 years old) Kurosawa continues to build on the experimentation with light that had been ignited in Rashomon, via reflecting shards of light across the samurai in the heat of battle,which gets whipped by rain hitting them like a sword through the heart.

Binding each of the loner ronin together, Kurosawa expands on his sharp eye for depth of field, with ultra-stylised dolly shots and delicately composed tracking shots unveiling an immerse atmosphere which glides the audience deep into the village, that is burnt down by Kurosawa’s excellent, distinctive screen-wipes slicing into the bond of the seven, leading to a poetic, Pyrrhic final shot.

Detailed by Kenneth Turan in the Criterion booklet that the title was written in 6 weeks, with Kurosawa banning co-writers Hashimoto and Oguni from taking any phone calls or having visitors come round their homes until the script was completed, the writers have the destruction from war (a major theme in Kurosawa’s work) hang in the air,as the dialogue becomes increasingly brittle from each battle that opens new wounds in the samurai's.

Wandering the land with no direction home, the writers match up the moral code of each samurai with new personal power from their new responsibilities which becomes an armor, that gets hammered from each battle, where their aggressive behavior poisons their relationship with the locals and grinding down the moral line of separation between the samurai and the bandits, until their decades-held code of loyalty is left as a pile of ashes on the hills.

Spinning across the battlefield like a rabid Tasmanian Devil, Toshiro Mifune gives a fantastic performance as samurai Kikuchiyo, who coming from a poor farming family, carries an anguished aware of the decay seeping in, but is unable to turn away,from charging in with the magnificent seven samurai.

Cowabunga Kurosawa-ranking:

Stray Dog
Rashomon
One Wonderful Sunday
No Regrets for Our Youth
Drunken Angel
Ikiru
Seven Samurai
The Idiot
Scandal
Sanjuro
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
The Quiet Duel
Uma
Sanshiro Sugata
Sanshiro Sugata Part 2
The Most Beautiful