The Seven Samurai
The Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no samurai, 1954) is a movie by Akira Kurosawa, starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune. The film takes place in war-ridden 16th-century Japan, where a village of farmers look for ways to ward off a band of marauding robbers. Since they do not themselves know how to fight, they hire seven ronin (lordless samurai) to fight for them.
The seven are:
- Kambei (Takashi Shimura) - the leader
- Katsushiro (Isao Kimura) - the young samurai who wants to be Kambei's disciple
- Gorobei (Yoshio Inaba) - a skilled samurai whom Kambei adopts as his right-hand man
- Shichiroji (Daisuke Kato) - an old comrade of Kambei reunited with his friend
- Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi) - a serious, stone-faced samurai who is a supremely skilled fencer
- Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki) - an amiable samurai whose skill is lacking but retains good cheer in the face of adversity
- Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) - a clowning would-be samurai who soon proves his worth to the others
The story unfolds gradually, and the heroes are not the cardboard cut-outs popular in some action movies. There is a chemistry developing between the villagers and their helpers, and a fairly continuous role reversal. For instance, to attract the samurai into helping them cheaply, the villagers have to act dumb and poor. Later, when the samurai find out what the villagers are really like and think of rebelling against their clients, the clownish samurai (Mifune) turns around and shows his real intelligence by convincing his fellow warriors of their need to fight for their clients.
The film's climax is a battle scene, in which the samurai and villagers are successful in driving off the attackers. However, four of the hired defenders do not survive the victory, and the surviving three are left to contemplate the village's victory celebration while ruefully noting that the villagers, while grateful for having preserved their land and their families, will not have much use for the warriors now that the fighting is done.
Several versions have been released, ranging in length from 141 to 160 minutes; the Japanese original and the U.S. reissue are both 203 minutes long.
In 2004, Kurosawa's estate approved the production of an anime remake of the film, called Samurai 7.
(still to mention:
- quality of acting
- cinematographic qualities
- which genres and films can be said to stem from The Seven Samurai
- prizes won by Kurosawa for this movie
- Inspiration and story for The Magnificent Seven, Battle Beyond the Stars, and Dikij vostok)
The comedy film The Three Amigos spun a twist on the Samurai plot, wherein the gunslinging ronin are actually professional actors who think they are being hired to pretend to save a town from bandits. The same idea was later replicated in the entomological animated film A Bug's Life and the pseudo-Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest.
External links
- Roger Ebert on The Seven Samurai (http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/samurai.html)
- Bright Lights Film Journal on The Seven Samurai (http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/17/10_samurai.html)
de:Die sieben Samurai es:Los siete samuráis eo:Shichinin no samurai fr:Les Sept samouraďs it:I sette Samurai ja:七人の侍