Seven Samurai [1954]

Progenitor of The Magnificent Seven. Great Cinema classic.

Show the reality of war not the glory shows that if you push a man to much he will fight you threaten his family he will die to protect and that to fight for innocent is noble

Akira Kurosawa created a unique tale of heroism, self-sacrifice, honour, courage and fearlessness in the face of death.This is an epic film which inspired the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as well as many other renowned directors. The Magnificent Seven was a western directly based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.Samurai warriors were driven by a code, to fight, to live and to die for honour, in defence of the weak, or in service for the greater cause.Kurosawa's film is a great depiction of these classical Japanese values embodied in the characters of seven samurai or masterless samurai (also known as "ronin") who undertook defence of a village raided by a large group of heavily armed bandits.The film despite being black and white and dating back to 1954 is a true masterpiece of cinematography with some revolutionary filming techniques employed by the director and epic soundtrack composed by Fumio Hayasaka. The set was built entirely from scratch at Tagata on the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka and so the film was not shot in the studio but in the real location for greater authenticity and better depiction of the story.Kurosawa spent a lot of effort in individual character development, presenting each of the samurai with all their virtues and vices, with certain degree of humour and comedy in doing so.There are also elements of a romance incorporated into the story although presented in a somewhat rudimentary fashion, the main emphasis being placed on battle imagery.The battle scenes were very well made considering the times the film was shot in. The key battle taking place in heavy rain, which added to dramaturgy of this epic tale culminating in the grand finale.The actors worth mentioning who distinguished themselves in the film are Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Seiji Miyaguchi.In conclusion, if you're a lover of Japanese samurai cinema, this classic film by Kurosawa is an absolute must. I highly recommend it.

First of all, I know this is a Japanese language film but do not let that turn you away from Seven Samurai. The film is so immersive that you will feel like you are watching a film in English after about five minutes of reading subtitles.Now, Kurosawa was an absolute master of cinema. Seven Samurai is my favourite film and I watch it at least twice a year. I am glad I finally bought it on Amazon so now I can access it wherever without a CD player. The film, although long, never overstays its welcome. Every scene is important and are either there to progress the story, give character progression, or set the scene for the final battle. The acting is brilliant, notably that of Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, they are fantastic in every Kurosawa film they are in. The film ticks every box for me, it is funny, happy, tense, thrilling, extremely layered, and incredibly sad at points. There is more than enough in this film to recommend multiple re-watches and the style of Kurosawa deserves to be picked apart and analysed for there may be no better. You can go into this film to see a fun action film with a well written script, or you can go deeper and read between the lines of Kurosawa's masterpiece and get more enjoyment with every watch. The build up to the battle is great and the ensemble play off each other well, with every character having interesting personalities and arcs. The final battle however, is one of the greatest fights in cinema history. The whole thing feels feels like one big pay off from start to finish. Every place is already so perfectly shown to you before the battle that you can follow it knowing exactly where characters are without any second thought. The ending is both triumphant and full of bitter sorrow, it is ambivalent and open to your own interpretation; so watching this with a friend or loved one is a great experience during and after if you love talking about movies. Finally, you will leave with a desire to experience this film all over again. It is a masterpiece through and through.

Bought as a gift for my husband who is besotted with this film. I can't stand it myself but each to their own. Took a long time to arrive so it missed his birthday but the fact that he now has it seems to make the delay irrelevant to him. Wish I could say I'm glad it is such good quality but, as that means we have it on the tv at every end and turn, I can't. He is ecstatic with it and, as that was the point, all's well.

characteristic as a classic

super

This movie is a lot more tactical than even some war films and that really adds to it. I am so glad I finally own a copy. It's not just the prototype for the Magnificent Seven it is an incredible movie in it's own right.The only thing that could have made it better? If it was Dubbed, rather than Subbed.

今見て最高の作品です！

My family group were very satisfied with Seven Samurai - most of us had seen it before but a long time ago, we all enjoyed it even the younger members of the group who did not know what to expect.I was delighted to be able to purchase this movie in Blu-ray format with high quality image and sound, as previously it was viewed on 35 ml celluloid which gave a very different effect.It will become a family treasure, as other members will look forward to viewing it.

Since there are over 300 reviews of this magnificent film already posted, I would like to discuss some aspects of this film that are rarely discussed.The first of these two themes is the various roles and attributes of the heroic male. The second of the two themes is the depiction of classism and a stratified society.However, before I comment on these two themes I must praise Kurosawa, the Director, for the incredible battle scenes. The level of realism, chaos, and accident is very high, giving the viewer a superb look into battle. As the layout of the village is drawn and repeatedly shown to the viewer in Kambei's maps, we fully understand the battleground and the rationale for defending specific sites and barrocading others. We understand Kambei's master strategy and its execution. We understand when it goes wrong or astray and we watch Kambei immediate correct the situation if possible. We see beserk men hacking at each other rather than an over stylized ballet posing as a battle scene. These battle scenes are masterful and rare. That being said, I would like to discuss the two themes I outlined above.First, we see three distinct ways or paths of the hero in this film. We see the character Kyuzo, the master swordsman, a completely skilled killing machine, swift as a scorpion and calm as a cool breeze. He is a craftsman, sure of his talent and skill. He is also serene, having obviously attained a detachment from emotion and day-to-day worries. He takes his skill seriously, as seen in his first scene where a dueling partner progresses from sticks to swords and Kyuzo kills him within seconds. A second revealing scene is the great sequence where wildman Kikuchoiyo and steel-nerved Kyuzo become a team to track and kill the three bandit scouts. The third scene is wisely left to our immagination. Kyuzo learns that three of the bandits hidden in the forrest around the village has a rifle. Kyuzo leaves the compound alone in the fog of night and many hours later returns with a rifle in hand. He hands the rifle to Kambei and goes calmly to sleep. We see that Kyuzo, though a self contained killing machine, can work in partnership with a wildly unpredictable partner as well as follow instructions from the wise leader, Kambei. Kyuzo is seen in all cultures and in all times. He is the totally proficient warrior. He is the warrior that all younger warriors wish to emulate. But he is incomplete because he lacks one virtue, purpose beyond himself. Yet he is wise enough to be persuaded by Kambei and to follow Kambei's wise direction. It is purposefully ironic that Kyuzo is shot in the back by one of the three rifles in the film, since no one can beat him face to face with sword technology.The character of Kikuchoiyo, the wild man who wishes to become a Samurai, the man who can not contain his energy or emotion, the force of nature, is an incredible character. He is the exact opposite of Kyuzo, the serene killing machine. He has little control of his emotions, is spontaneous and rage driven. Yet his character undergoes the most transformation in the film. He goes from being a lying drunken bully imposter to a force of great good, primarily through the strategic hands off mentoring of Kambei. We learn that he is not from a Samurai family but is the orphan of farmers killed by bandits. Kikuchoiyo first gives us a hint as to his background when he informs the samurai that farmers always have hidden resources on which to call, this secrecy being necessary for thier survival. However when the bandits attack the old miller and his family in the grist mill, Kikuchoiyo comes to the rescue and saves a baby boy from the dying arms of its mother. Kikuchoiyo breaks down in mid-action, holding the child in a stream with warfare surrounding him, and wails that this exact thing happened to him as a child. In the Jungian sense, Kikuchoiyo reclaimed his orphan child self at this point, he saves a real child but he also saves an inner psychic child within himself and thus this allows him to be a true Samurai rather than an imposter Samurai. He is a fighting force, full of emotion and power. He taps into the natural, biological forces of injustice in the final battle scenes. Ironically, this is what brings about his end, for those who fight with pure emotion exceed their bounds. When the rifleman bandit kills Kyuzo from behind a wooden screen, Kikuchoiyo is overtaken with rage and attacks the screen trying to pull it apart to reach the bandit. He takes a bullet in the belly but goes on fighting until he collapses.This brings us to the final penacle of heroism, Kambei, the mastermind Samurai leader with a vast range of intellectual, interpersonal, and warrior skills. Kambei has a range of leadership skills including; ability to make realistic assessments so as not to support unrealistic optimism, ability to use small resources to bring down much larger forces, ability to fight on the edges, the fringes, to deplete the resources and power of his enemy, ability to mentor other men by drawing out their unique talent and using that talent for the greater good, ability to judge the greater good from immediate gains, ability to change course in the middle of battle when the facts reveal that a new strategy is needed, abiltiy to recover quickly from loss and mve forward, and an ability to use humor and a personal relationship to move men toward action. Finally, he has incredible humility which allows him to make realistic assessments of conditions and resources and dynamics. Humility is an underestimated asset. Humility is essential to the leader because egotism and grandiosity cloud a man's vision. Humility keeps vision clear - an essential for survival and leadership.Now we come to the second theme of the film, which is understanding the actions of all the characters witin a context of classism and a stratified society. The meek, clownlike, foolish farmers gradually are seen as far from timid fools. They survive amidst overwhelming odds. They hire ronin, which were the masterless unemployeed samurai soldiers that roamed Japan in the 16th century. In the end, four of the seven samurai are burried with distinction in the village cemetary, but as Kambei points out, it is the farmers that won the battle, they overcame a threat to their existence, the samurai being a tool by which they overcame the threat. When the village women kill a single bandit in a chicken house using garden hoes, we see evidence of the willingness of these farmers to fight for survival. However, the farmers, like the samurai, owe much to the realistic strategic leadership of Kambei.Within this epic masterpiece are two subplots of great interest. First, young farmer Rikichi always seems to be hiding something and as the story progresses we learn that his young wife was stolen by the bandits and is now their sex slave. Rikichi volunteers to attack their camp and we learn it is to find his wife. However, as he peeps into the bandit lair, he sees her despondent and in deep grief. When she sees flames at both ends of the shack, her first instict is to scream, but her second is to remain silent in hopes that she and the bandits will all burn to death. She eventually runs from the shack but when she sees Rikichi, her overwhelming shame forces her to run back into the burning building where she is lost. The second subplot was the seduction of the young warrior Katshushiro by Shino, the daughter of Farmer Manzo. I have never seen such masterful body language as is demonstrated by Shino as she seduces the young man while maintaining the pretend role of the persued.This is a fantastic work of art that almost defies description due to its depth and mastery of storytelling. It is a film where many forces of art converge to produce a rare masterpiece.