Seven Samurai
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Short description
Set in sixteenth-century Japan, where civil war has left bands of armed men roaming the countryside, Seven Samurai follows a poor farming village whose harvest is stolen year after year by raiders. Unable to defend themselves, the villagers seek out wandering warriors willing to take on the modest, poorly paid task, and eventually seven samurai agree to help. Under the leadership of the veteran Kambei Shimada, they train the farmers, fortify the village and prepare for the bandits' return, while the townspeople and their hired defenders gradually move past their mutual suspicion.
Akira Kurosawa directed and co-wrote the film with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, and it was produced by Sōjirō Motoki for TOHO. It is the eighth of the twenty-three features Kurosawa directed, arriving between Ikiru and I Live in Fear. The large cast, credited at 101 performers, is headed by Takashi Shimura as Kambei and Toshirō Mifune as Kikuchiyo, with Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki and Daisuke Katō among the other samurai. Its 207-minute running time makes it an unusually expansive action drama for its era.
The film is held in very high regard. On IMDb it holds 8.6/10 from around 400,000 votes, and on TMDB 8.5/10 from over 4,000 votes, while a critics' rating of 9.7/10 from 103 reviews places it above even those strong audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- All of the firearms in the film are historically accurate: they are antique Japanese muskets called tanegashima.
- It is believed that the film "Seven Samurai" was the first to introduce the element of an adventure drama – the selection of a team of people, each gifted in their own way. This plot device was subsequently frequently used.
- Actor Seiji Miyaguchi, who played the swordsman Kyuzo, had never actually practiced swordsmanship.
- The film marks the first time in Kurosawa's work that a contrast arises between traditional samurai cold weapons and firearms, which are perceived as incompatible with warrior honor. Guns are present in the film only with the bandits, and only "half-samurai" Kikuchiyo fires a gun, and only once. Subsequently, in other films by Kurosawa, this motif was intensified and emphasized – for example, in "Yojimbo" (1961) – and reached its climax in "Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior" (1980).
- The film came about largely because Akira Kurosawa very much wanted to try his hand at the jidaigeki genre (historical film about the adventures of samurai), which was popular in Japan, and to make it both profound in meaning and engaging in form. Initially, he intended to make a parable-like film about one day in the life of a samurai, tracing all of the hero’s actions up to the evening, when he was to commit ritual suicide. In the end, Kurosawa did not dare to tackle such material, believing he did not know the necessary nuances well enough. However, while working on this plot, he came across a case where a village belonging to one of the slain feudal lords hired several ronin to protect it from bandits (strictly speaking, ronin themselves), and decided to base the film on this story.
- The plot of "Seven Samurai" has been used in many films. Even the plot of Pixar's animated film "A Bug's Life" (1998) almost completely copies "Seven Samurai" in the first half of the film. Ants act as the peasants, and locusts as the bandits. One episode almost verbatim quotes an episode from "Seven Samurai," specifically the moment when the grieving peasants realize that even if their village buys off the bandits, its inhabitants still face starvation.
- In 1981, the Gorky Film Studio released the film 'The Sixth,' in which, in the early years after the Civil War, young Soviet police in a provincial town clash with bandits.
- Filming of the final battle had to be stopped several times due to a shortage of horses.
- In the film "28 Panfilovs," the characters retell the plot of "Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven" as a tall tale.
- The role of Kikutyō became a favorite of actor Toshiro Mifune, who remembered every word spoken by his character throughout his life.
- The film ranks first on Empire magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema," compiled in 2010.
- Toho Studio repeatedly tried to halt filming, as it was generally believed the film was destined for complete financial failure, and the director was constantly exceeding his budget. Each time, Kurosawa had to persuade the producers to resume funding.
- The film came about largely because Akira Kurosawa really wanted to try his hand at the jidaigeki genre, making it both profound in meaning and captivating in form. He initially intended to make a parable film about one day in the life of a samurai, tracing all the hero's actions up to the evening when he was to commit ritual suicide. Ultimately, Kurosawa didn't dare tackle such material, believing he didn't know the nuances well enough. However, while working on this plot, he stumbled upon a case where a village, belonging to one of the slain feudal lords, hired several ronin to protect it from bandits.
- One scene in the film contains a detail that allows for the precise dating of events. A stolen birth certificate of Kikuchiyo states that he was born in the second year of the Kinsei era, which corresponds to 1574, and Kambei concludes that Kikuchiyo is therefore only 13 years old. Considering the peculiarities of age calculation in Japan (a newborn child is considered one year old), the events of "Seven Samurai" unfold in 1586.
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