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The Seven Samurai (1954)
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima
Summary
For only a meagre three meals a day, 7 Ronin (masterless samurai) are hired by villages to protect them from bandits.
Synopsis
When villages overhear that bandits are planning to return to steal their crops and harvest time the village elder suggests that they must hire samurai to protect them, although all they have to offer in payment is food.
The villagers ask ageing ronin Kambei for help after an initial hesitation Kambei set about recruiting six more Ronin to defend the village. Including an inexperienced apprentice Katsushirō and Kikuchiyo, who carries with him a family scroll to prove he a samurai but reality is from a village just like the one to be defended. Kikuchiyo is initially rejected follows the group until he is accepted.
After an initially cold reception in the village, there are there help trust begins to grow as the community and samurai work to together to train, and the samurai comes to terms the shame of how other samurai have brought torment to such villages.
The villagers and samurai stand together to face a final series of battles with the bandits.
Review.
As the world know this is the film that inspired the classic western “The Magnificent Seven”, and while the story we love and scenes that are indelibly marked into are memories from the “The Magnificent Seven” are lifted very faithfully from its predecessor – make no mistake these are two very different films. The “The Seven Samurai” is a much darker piece of work dealing with the culture and social hierarchy of feudal Japan.
I’m not sure it an advantage or a disadvantage that I have come to the film after loving the “The Magnificent Seven” for most of my life, therefore, it hard to write a straight review as opposed to a comparison. As I watch it looking for the similar scenes, for example, the sword duel paralleling James Coburn’s knife fight. However, I notice differences too.
“The Seven Samurai” is harder watch the “The Magnificent Seven”; the characterisation of the main characters and their places in society, play a much more important role. There is considerable development in the script, exploring the motivation of the samurai. The acting is faultless; the cinematography is beautiful the black & white renders the Japanese countryside in wonderful tones.
“The Seven Samurai” makes you think, it is not a romp about seven adventurers looking for excitement in the changing life – it is more about pride and redemption. Ronin are lonely figures outcast from society many did fall into the ways of the bandit as a way to make ends meet – the men although masterless still honour their bushido code by defending those who can not defend themselves for just a salary of 3 bowls of rice a day.