#Seven Samurai Kambei

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today’s disabled character of the day is Kambei Shimada from Seven Samurai, who has an unspecified trauma disorder

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Drawing of a man with long brown hair and brown eyes. He has a brown short beard. He is wearing white robes, black do, long silver spike earrings, and red waist sash.]

[wouldtheybecomeafearavatar]

Would Kambei Shimada from Seven Samurai (1954 movie) become an avatar of the Slaughter?

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

Kambei from Seven Samurai (1954) by Patrick Zircher

[themediamercenary]

Seven Samurai Blog

Seven Samurai is often considered Akira Kurosawa’s magnum opus. For a film made sixty years ago, the sharp black-and-white resolution and modern cinematography hold up better than even films made nowadays.  Each scene is so beautifully composed that the film never drags despite its methodical storytelling. From the start, viewers will immediately be compelled by the class struggles, and sympathize with the villagers who are reliant on samurai due to militaristic abandonment. However, as the film progresses, we see the selfish nature of the villagers which culminates in a gutting final closing statement. The elderly ronin Kambei declares “The farmers are the victors, not us”.

After losing four of their carefully assembled samurai crew, the remaining samurai are met with little acclaim from the villagers. The village’s selfish nature left me wondering if it was even worth it. During a moment of crisis, the village only seemed to care about a young samurai sleeping with a farm girl. The samurai clan’s overall approval symbolizes their stature above class. The villagers are just as bad as the rest of the class system through their disrespect of those willing to help.

These moments would not be as emotionally effective without the immaculate staging of characters. In particular, the first half intricately builds trust between the farmers and the samurai. The film wastes no time effectively developing characters. Notably, the widely-ranged Toshiro Mifune shines as Kikuchiyo. The comic relief and lowest of the samurai crew becomes the most intriguing character. He quickly turns into the most dynamic character, especially during a crucial scene where he saves a farmer kid, but not his mother. Kikuchiyo states “This boy is me. This boy’s story is my story”. This implies his life as a farmer and the collective tragedy they faced. It could hint at why he is effortlessly made the crew’s disposable shitbag and his family tree remains ridiculed.

Furthermore, I find the film’s use of violence effective. All types of battle and class-related atrocities are captured compellingly as they should be, but the film finds good use in moments of comical levity. It’s quite something to go from the despair of dying innocents and village destruction to cheering the defeat of a combatant. More so, the film does this without ever feeling jarring in its tone shifts. They are naturally thought out, allowing for moments of reflection as well as much-needed moments of swashbuckling entertainment. Its effortless blend of drama and comedy is truly timeless.

[orlando-jpt3391]

Seven Samurai

I really enjoyed watching Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It is understandable why it received so much praise during its release and many years after. The elements of heroism, comedy and struggle are remarkably captured by these 7 samurai defending the village. When we first get introduced to Kambei, he cuts his topknot to pose as a monk to save the kid from the thief holding him hostage. Despite the significance that a samurai’s top knot holds with respect to their status, he still cuts it off for the sake of someone else. This scene does a great job establishing Kambei as a heroic, capable, respectable character and it definitely solidified him as my favorite character of the movie. Even though the narrative engine is very serious in nature, Kurosawa effectively places moments of humor and light-heartedness throughout the film. In large part, these moments came from Kikuchiyo. There were two moments that I really found funny. The first was when he was coming into the place that the samurai were staying at and Kambei told the concerned villager “A true samurai won’t get hit.” This was when Katsushirō was waiting by the door to test Kikuchiyo, a test to which he failed. The second was a scene that was in direct contrast to when Kyūzō marched into enemy lines to steal away a musket. In this scene, Kyūzō says he is going to do something, he does it, and does not boast about it. On the other hand, Kikuchiyo leaves his post out of jealousy and retrieves a musket, for all the glory, resulting in bandits breaching the post he abandoned. At first glance, Kikuchiyo seems like he is just a comic relief character, but he actually has a fair degree of depth that goes beyond this. What really sold this idea to me was when he comes back with armor from samurai slain at the hands of farmers and responds to the other samurai’s anger by explaining how samurai have played a significant role in causing the farmers suffering, eventually revealing that he was a farmer growing up. This film creates a situation of high stakes where characters pay the price for their actions. In the struggle against the bandits, many of the villagers died along with four of the samurai. The death of the samurais were powerful moments in the movie that snapped the audience into realizing the severity of the stakes. After the struggle against the bandits is over, and the villagers win, we are left with a bittersweet moment where the villagers are happy and working on their fields, while the remaining samurai are left knowing that the win was for the villagers and not for them.  

[dionaeafl]

Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa (1954) JPT3391 Neil McInnis

Set in the late Azuchi-Momoyama period, 7 Samurai details a story of survival, community, camaraderie, and loss. After a series of devastating raids from a marauding band of thieves, a small village turns to a traveling samurai, Kambei, for aid. Understandably, the Samurai is reluctant and skeptical at first, since he has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Fortunately for the villagers, he comes around to their side after rescuing one of their children from a stray bandit. Now determined to protect who he sees as innocent rural folk, he sets out to the city to recruit more Samurai for the effort. However, the village has been left practically destitute, and can only offer small servings of rice to any Samurai who offers them aid. The village elder suggests they find "a hungry Samurai".

In the town, after a series of surprise-attack tests on Samurai, they recruit Kambei's old war-buddy Shichirōji, along with Gorobei (a proficient archer), Heihachi, and Kyūzō, a stoic master swordsman whom Katsushirō develops a man-crush on. Kikuchiyo, a wild-eyed, monkey-like Samurai wannabe, is eventually accepted into the group after they give up trying to get him to go away. Once all 7 are recruited, they return to the village and begin the long process of building trust between themselves and the villagers. This trust also involves training them to use spears and basic tactics. They construct various defense structures, like wooden palisades, moats, and moving villagers to the center of the village.

Kambei decides to strike at the bandits preemptively, with a strike party consisting of Heihachi, Kikuchiyo, and Rikichi. They burn the bandit hut and force them out, freeing the captured women and cutting down the men. Rikichi's wife was made a concubine, so he and Heihachi rushed inside to rescue her. Tragically, Heihachi is shot at a distance by a musket. He's killed almost immediately and Kikuchiyo carries his body back to the village. Racked with grief, Kikuchiyo plants the flag they made atop a house overlooking Heihachi's grave, and vows to fight to the end.

The day of the raid approaches, the 6 remaining Samurai continue to fortify the village and train the villagers with bamboo spears. Kyuzo successfully dispatches 2 bandits and takes 1 musket in a solo night raid. Kambei orders the villagers to let the bandits in singularly or in small groups to slowly dispatch all of them. In the next raid, Gorobei is killed by a mounted archer. This goes on for several days, and Kikuchiyo steals one more musket. In the next raid, the presumed leader of the bandits takes several villagers hostage with a musket, and starts shooting at the Samurai as they try to break in. He hits Kyuzo, killing him nearly instantly. Enraged, Kikuchiyo charges the bandit, and sustains a serious wound, but still manages to drive his katana through the bandit's chest before he succumbs to his injury.

All in all, 4 of the 7 Samurai were killed, 3 of the 4 by gunshot. Kambei reflects on the incident, saying "in the end this was our loss. Those peasants bear the true victory" as he, Katsuhiro, and Shichiroji gaze solemnly at the graves of their fallen comrades.

The shot I chose to analyze for this film was the one where Kikichiyo stabs 5 more katana into a mound of mud, so that he can pick them up easily. This scene reflects the anger and guilt he feels from his fallen friends, and his resolve to keep on fighting on behalf of them and the villagers.

[alexstudyjapanese]

Seven Samurai

Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, although having a runtime of three and a half hours, was engaging for me from front to finish. The film takes place in 16th century Japan, covering a small farming village’s conflict with raiding bandits. The village elder decides to fight back, and a small group of men are sent to find samurai to fight for the village. The first hour of so is spent assembling the titular crew of seven samurai who devote themselves to defending the village from the bandits.

My favorite part of the film is the attention to each characters’ personality, struggle, and motives. When the samurai are introduced, you get a sense of why the character chooses to join the crew or not. A huge influence is the caste system that influenced Japan in this era, with samurai not finding the same honor in defending a village as defending a clan with a castle. Kikuchiyo interested me the most, as he was clearly overcompensating for some aspect he felt he internally lacked, as seen in his attempt to deceive the samurai into believing he was from a line of samurai. This attention to the individual also adds weight to the fight scenes for me, as the impact of the character’s decisions and immediate objectives, as well as the consequences suffered, are clearly portrayed.

The caste conflict rises in two main subplots. Firstly, when it’s revealed the villagers are harboring samurai armor, meaning they have killed samurai in a past conflict. This adds immense tension, as the samurai question why they are even fighting for deceitful villagers. A powerful character moment followed when Kikuchiyo argued for the villagers, despite their nature to lie, because the samurai have caused them to live in fear. This moment revealed why Kikuchiyo has acted in the way he did, as he was born a farmer and moved through the caste system to become a samurai.

The other subplot involves a love story between Shino, the daughter of one of the villagers, and Katsushiro, a young samurai. On the eve of the decisive battle, Shino’s father discovers the pair’s entanglement, lashing out in anger and calling Shino damaged goods. This further displays the fact that farmers and samurai simply should not mix. Although this subplot was less crucial to the story, I think that Kurosawa was trying to fight against this strict system, with villagers saying “it’s just two people in love”.

People are driven by societal expectations of how they must act. Farmers and samurai do not mix. Samurai have the drive to prove their strength and honor in defending a village, even if they have nothing but rice to gain. The bandits continue their offensive, even once it’s clear the village’s defenses are too much for them. The outcome of this thinking is summed up nicely in the final scene, with Kambei saying “In the end, we’ve lost this battle too” before the camera pans up to the graves of the four fallen samurai. The peasant farmers are the victors, not the samurai who fought for them.

The filming techniques in this movie very pleasantly surprised me. I found myself entranced by the fighting scenes with shots such as the women’s point of view of the fighting from behind the wooden bars of their shelter. With almost exclusively practical effects, I was interested in the filming process of this movie. Turns out it wasn’t all that smooth, with the movie being delayed twice due to Kurosawa going overbudget and the final cost being $500,000 USD, the most of any Japanese film at the time. I think this speaks to the grand scale of the film, perhaps more than any other Japanese film up until that point.

[pixelatedsushirolls]

Seven Samurai

This movie had me stressed. But in a good way. One thing this movie did a phenomenal job at was making me invested with its various characters. Within the first couple of minutes of the film, I could tell it was going to go down the hero’s journey route, were our heroes had to be “assembled” before the story could progress. Though this is a very common trope used in many modern movies in today’s time, therefore it is highly likely for one to take for granted how groundbreaking this type of “avenger assemble” movie was for the time.

One thing I would look like to talk about specifically is Kambei and is establishing character moment, or rather, the moment that defined to us the audience what type of person he is – which is the scene in which he cuts his hair. What’s so special about this scene is that it immediately shows how Kambei’s beliefs contrasts that of the typical samurai, as no honorable samurai would cut his hair. Yet here we see Kambei, shaving his hair, in order to save someone’s life. This sacrifice is something that is present for the rest of the movie, as his head remained shaven for the rest of the film. To me this is a perfect parallel to the ending of the movie, as although the village was saved, it came at the price of 4 of the 7 samurai. Sometimes doing what is morally right comes at a price, some temporary – as with Kambei’s hair which should eventually grow back with time – and some permanent – as with the deaths of samurai. But is the price worth it. At the end of the film Kambei states to his remaining fellow samurai that at the end of it all, they didn’t win, the villagers did – to which the camera then pans towards the 4 mounds were our fallen heroes have been buried. To me, this indicates that although they did end up saving the village, Kambei feels as if though the sacrifice was not worth it as now, he is returning home with the knowledge that he led 4 of his fellow samurai to their death.

[byneddiedingo]

Takashi Shimura in Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa,1954)

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Seigi Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Bokuzen Hidari, Yukiko Shimazaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Keiko Tsushima, Kokuten Kodo, Yoshio Kosugi. Shinpei Takagi, Eijiro Tono, Tatsuya Nakadai. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai. Production design: Takashi Matsuyama. Film editing: Akira Kurosawa. Music: Fumio Hayasaka. 

It's a truism that silent movies and talkies constitute two distinct artistic media, and to judge the one by the standards of the other is an error. But it's almost impossible to watch films made by older directors, especially those who came of age when silent films were being made, without noticing the efforts they make to tell their stories without speech. It's true of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks, even though they, especially Hawks, became masters of dialogue in their films. And it's true of Kurosawa, who although he didn't begin his career in films until 1936 and directed his first one in 1943, was born in 1910 and grew up with silent movies. I think it helped him learn the universals of storytelling that are independent of language, so that he became the most popular of all Japanese filmmakers. Others rank the work of Ozu or Mizoguchi more highly, but Kurosawa's films manage to transcend the limitations of subtitles more easily. Of none of his films is this more true than Seven Samurai, which is also generally regarded, even by those with reservations about Kurosawa's work, as his masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly, but having sat enthralled through the uncut version, three hours and 27 minutes long, last night, I'm willing to endorse it. It's an exhilarating film, with none of the longueurs that epics -- I'm thinking of Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) and Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) -- so easily fall into. I don't know of any action film with as many vividly drawn characters, and that's largely because Kurosawa takes the time to delineate each one. It's also a film about its milieu, 16th-century Japan, although as its American imitation, The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), shows, there's a universality about the antagonism between fighters and farmers. Kurosawa captures this particularly well in the character of Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), the would-be samurai who reveals in mid-film that he was raised as a farmer and carried both a kind of self-hate for his class along with a hatred for the arrogant treatment of farmers by samurai. Mifune's show-off performance is terrific, but the film really belongs to Takashi Shimura, who radiates stillness and wisdom as Kambei Shimada, the leader of the seven. There are clichés to be found, such as the fated romance of the young samurai trainee Katsushiro (Isao Kimura) and the farmer's daughter Shino (Keiko Tsushima), but like the best clichés, they ring true. Seven Samurai earned two Oscar nominations, for Takashi Matsuyama's art direction and Kohei Ezaki's costumes, but won neither. Overlooking Kurosawa's direction, Shimura's performance, and Asakazu Nakai's cinematography is unforgivable, if exactly what one expects from the Academy.

[world-cinema-research]

Week 2: Seven Samurai -Yanissa Agbigay

The movie I chose for this week is called Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa. This 1954 film has a 4.8 overall rating and has a handful of viewers who enjoyed this film. Some even commented saying that they feel this movie is a legendary classic, that is influential and unforgettable, while others out there don’t agree and think the movie is quite lengthy while having poor quality. For myself, I would have to agree that this movie was very well made and has a very authentic feel to it. I too enjoyed watching this film and seeing how determined the six villagers were in protecting their own people and village. I decided to watch this film because it reminded me of my childhood, spending time watching older classic movies with my dad. The movie captures a struggling village of farmers who are being forced to give up all their food to bandits giving these villagers the reason to end their lives. Now, the hope for this village is that they will find a samurai who will train 6 men amongst the villagers, to protect their village from the bandits. Luckily for them, they were able to find a veteran samurai who would then help fight the bandits off along with the other men. This man is to be called Kambei Shimada. Kambei was first seen shaving his whole head in front of the villagers, which is an important scene because he was portraying a monk with intent to save a little boy from a thief who snuck in. We can then see that his plan worked and was able to save this young innocent boy, with no injuries to anyone except for the thief himself.

When Kurosawa directed this movie, their costing budget was around ¥210 million, equaling to $580,000 in USD. Other numbers involving this film were within its releases. Starting off with the domestic release which was $318,649. With the international release they were able to make $27,609 and lastly their worldwide release made about $346,258. Again, I would like to say that this film is quite a success and has lots of viewers who keep coming back to watch.

I would also like to share some historical events that has happened within the movie’s first release in 1954. They include the ruling of the Supreme Court rules on Brown v. Board of Education, stating that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the "separate but equal" principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. Along with the first Indo-China war ending, which ended with the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and French withdrawal from Vietnam after the Geneva Accords. There are many other historical events that happened within the year Seven Samurai was released, but these are the two I decided to choose.

The style of the film is known as Hollywood action. Not only did Kurosawa create a legendary film but he didn’t have a normal plot between the characters. For example, Good Vs. Evil. When watching, We can learn in this movie that some of towns villagers also preyed on class samurai’s but ended up on the other side of things and now have to seek help from a samurai.

This film is such an incredible work of art and is still such a classic, with many viewers who appear to also agree. Overall, this film reflected time and effort on Kurosawa’s part and has shown us a reality of poor villagers and their experiences. As well as, how skilled and trained samurai’s are and must be.

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Accepted Characters 8/6/2023

Professor Hastings from the Pokemon series

Captain Jan de la Vega from Dimension 20

Ann from The Rubbish World of Dave Spud 

Ted Lasso from Ted Lasso

Edward Teach (Blackbeard) from Our Flag Means Death

Lena Sabrewing from Ducktales

Ronnie Kwan from Dimension 20 

Kambei Shimada from Seven Samurai

Isabel Guerra from Paranatural

Wetzel from Dimension 20

Agate from Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Shinichi Kudo (Conan Edogawa) from Detective Conan 

John D. Rockerduck from Ducktales

Philip Salinger from The Ables

Pat from Later Alligator

Master Craftsman's Son from Legend of Zelda

The Knife from Later Alligator 

214 Request Remain

[byneddiedingo]

Drunken Angel has been called Akira Kurosawa's Stagecoach, because just as John Ford established a fruitful director-actor team with John Wayne in his 1939 Western, in this movie Kurosawa launched a brilliant collaboration with Toshiro Mifune that lasted for 16 films. But to my mind, just as important, Drunken Angel teamed Mifune with the great character actor Takashi Shimura. Kurosawa saw how Shimura's low-key steadfastness serves as a foil for Mifune's volatility and reteamed them in 1949 for two films, The Quiet Duel and Stray Dog, but their most memorable work together would come in Seven Samurai (1954), in which Shimura's wise and wily Kambei Shimada plays off beautifully against Mifune's madly unpredictable Kikuchiyo. In Drunken Angel, Shimura has the title role: an alcoholic doctor laboring in the slums of a postwar Japanese city. His clinic fronts a festering lake of sewage and his clientele comes largely from the neighboring nightclubs and brothels. Mifune plays Matsunaga, a swaggering young gangster with tuberculosis, who comes to Dr. Sanada hoping for a cure that won't put a crimp in his lifestyle. The screenplay by Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uekusa makes both characters into complex figures: Sanada's bitterness about his poverty and lack of status feeds his alcoholism, but he persists in trying to help his patients, even when, like Matsunaga, they resist his efforts, sometimes violently. Still, there's a bond between the two men in a recognition that they are both caught in traps they didn't make. What makes Drunken Angel more than just a clever reworking of film noir tropes -- another instance of Kurosawa's fascination with American movies -- is that it's a veiled commentary on the wounded Japan, in which the militaristic violence has been turned inward. Yesterday's soldier has become today's yakuza, still carrying on about honor and saving face. Kurosawa's film delivers an incisive criticism of some of the root problems facing his country. Made during the American occupation, when censorship was at its strictest, especially in depicting violence, Kurosawa nevertheless stages some vivid and intense fight scenes, using Mifune's physicality to great effect. That much of it occurs against a background of Western-style pop music only heightens its boldness.  

三船敏郎 // MIFUNE TOSHIRO 醉いどれ天使 // Drunken Angel (1948)

[ouatihell]

Rating Main Characters from the Top Ten of Variety’s 100 Best Movies List Based on Whether or Not I’d have a Drink with Them

I have massive beef with this list but that’s beside the point

1) Norman Bates (Psycho)

11/10 and not just bc @old-wild-child would be disappointed in me if I rated him any less. I don’t even care if Mother would try to kill me. He’s also probably got zero tolerance for alcohol and I think that would be funny to watch.

2) Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz)

0/10 that is a CHILD. I would however get fucked up with the scarecrow.

3) Michael Corleone (The Godfather)

5/10 I’m scared of him but maybe it would be fun idk. I haven’t seen this movie in ages.

4) Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane)

7/10 IF it’s like 25 year old Kane. Idc about old man Kane but I bet he’d be entertaining if it was that era.

5) Jules and uhh. Uhh. That other guy. Vega. VINCENT!! (Pulp Fiction)

8/10 for the pure gits and shiggles of it. I don’t think they’d kill me because they don’t have a reason to.

6) Kambei Shimada (Seven Samurai)

5/10 because I’ve never seen this but uhhh he’s got a sword that’s pretty cool.

7) Dave. Guy. Dave Bowman? (2001: a Space Odyssey)

3/10. Is this picture even him? I don’t know, I haven’t seen this one, but considering it’s space and they’re probably sad and stuff I don’t think he’d be super fun to drink with. That said I would totally drink my sorrows away with Roy McBride. Yes I’m biased.

8) George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life)

I know I JUST said I wouldn’t hang out with Dave because he’s sad and weird but me and George are the same kind of sad and weird so he’s getting a 7/10 👍👍👍

9) Margo (All About Eve)

6/10 because I ALSO haven’t seen this one (fake film bro 😔) but she looks like fun.

10) Tom Hanks. I mean. Uhh. JOHN H MILLER (Saving Private Ryan)

5/10 because I’ve never seen this and he looks scary :((

[postersdecinema]

Zatôichi umi o wataru

A peregrinação de Zatoichi

JP, 1966

Kazuo Ikehiro

7/10

Zatoichi Yojimbo

Há uma ligação indelével entre esta saga do massagista samurai Zatoichi, cego mas invencível e vingador das injustiças, e os western do tipo spaghetti, ao seu melhor nível, como é o caso da obra de Sergio Leone.

Kurosawa deu o mote, com obras primas como os Sete Samurais (1954) ou Yojimbo (1961), ambos adaptados a westerns, o segundo por Leone em Por um Punhado de Dólares (1964) e o primeiro por John Sturges em Os Sete Magníficos (1960), este com várias sequelas.

Também Zatoichi, estreado no cinema em 1962, baseado num personagem literário criado pelo romancista Kan Shimozawa em 1928, é um herdeiro direto de Yojimbo, de Kambei Shimada e dos seus discípulos norte-americanos, interpretados por Yul Brynner e Clint Eastwood, entre outros. E originou 26 filmes e uma série de televisão de 100 episódios, com um remake norte americano do décimo sétimo filme da série, Zatoichi Challenged, sob o nome Blind Fury (1989), dirigido por Philip Noyce.

Estamos assim, perante uma instituição do cinema e da televisão japoneses, que eu não posso deixar de ver como um prolongamento desses clássicos, dos heróis-vilões solitários de Kurosawa e de Sergio Leone.

Este episódio, Zatoichi's Pilgrimage, o décimo terceiro da série, é particularmente evocativo de Yojimbo e, por isso, de Toshiro Mifune e de Clint Eastwood, ao seu melhor nível. E Shintarô Katsu, o homem que deu corpo a Zatoichi, durante 26 filmes e 100 episódios televisivos, entre 1962 e 1979 (com um derradeiro filme em 1989 que também dirigiu), não lhes fica seguramente atrás, no carisma e no talento com que enriquece o personagem.

A título de curiosidade, parece que a Miramax comprou os direitos deste filme, alegadamente para fazer um remake, dirigido por Quentin Tarantino.

Zatoichi Yojimbo

There is an indelible connection between this saga of the samurai masseur Zatoichi, blind but invincible and avenger of injustice, and spaghetti westerns, at their best, such as the work of Sergio Leone.

Kurosawa set the tone, with masterpieces such as Seven Samurai (1954) or Yojimbo (1961), both adapted into westerns, the second by Leone in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and the first by John Sturges in The Magnificent Seven (1960), this one with several sequels.

Also Zatoichi, debuted in cinema in 1962, based on a literary character created by novelist Kan Shimozawa in 1928, is a direct heir of Yojimbo, Kambei Shimada and his North American disciples, played by Yul Brynner and Clint Eastwood, among others. And it originated 26 films and a 100-episode television series, with a North American remake of the seventeenth film in the series, Zatoichi Challenged, under the name Blind Fury (1989), directed by Philip Noyce.

We are thus faced with an institution of Japanese cinema and television, which I cannot help but see as an extension of these classics, of Kurosawa and Sergio Leone's solitary hero-villains.

This episode, Zatoichi's Pilgrimage, the thirteenth in the series, is particularly evocative of Yojimbo and, therefore, of Toshiro Mifune and Clint Eastwood, at their best. And Shintarô Katsu, the man who embodied Zatoichi, during 26 films and 100 television episodes, between 1962 and 1979 (with a final film in 1989 which he also directed), is certainly not behind them, in terms of the charisma and talent with which he enriches the character.

Out of curiosity, it appears that Miramax purchased the rights to this film, allegedly to make a remake, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

[byneddiedingo]

It's a truism -- one that I've often echoed -- that silent movies and talkies constitute two distinct artistic media, and to judge the one by the standards of the other is an error. But it's almost impossible to watch films made by older directors, especially those who came of age when silent films were being made, without noticing the efforts they make to tell their stories without speech. It's true of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks, even though they, especially Hawks, became masters of dialogue in their films. And it's true of Akira Kurosawa, who although he didn't begin his career in films until 1936 and directed his first one in 1943, was born in 1910 and grew up with silent movies. I think it helped him learn the universals of storytelling that are independent of language, so that he became the most popular of all Japanese filmmakers. Others rank the work of Yasujiro Ozu or Kenji Mizoguchi more highly, but Kurosawa's films manage to transcend the limitations of subtitles more easily. Of none of his films is this more true than Seven Samurai, which is also generally regarded, even by those with reservations about Kurosawa's work, as his masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly, but having sat enthralled through the uncut version, three hours and 27 minutes long, I'm willing to endorse it. It's an exhilarating film, with none of the longueurs that epics -- I'm thinking of Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) and Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) -- so easily fall into. I don't know of any action film with as many vividly drawn characters, and that's largely because Kurosawa takes the time to delineate each one. It's also a film about its milieu, 16th-century Japan, although as its American imitation, The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), shows, there's a universality about the antagonism between fighters and farmers. Kurosawa captures this particularly well in the character of Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), the would-be samurai who reveals in mid-film that he was raised as a farmer and carried both a kind of self-hate for his class along with a hatred for the arrogant treatment of farmers by samurai. Mifune's show-off performance is terrific, but the film really belongs to Takashi Shimura, who radiates stillness and wisdom as Kambei Shimada, the leader of the seven. There are clichés to be found, such as the fated romance of the young samurai trainee Katsushiro (Isao Kimura) and the farmer's daughter Shino (Keiko Tsushima), but like the best clichés, they ring true. Seven Samurai earned two Oscar nominations, for So Matsuyama's art direction and Kohei Ezaki's costumes, but won neither. Overlooking Kurosawa's direction, Shimura's performance, and Asakazu Nakai's cinematography is unforgivable, if exactly what one expects from the Academy.

TOSHIRO MIFUNE in SEVEN SAMURAI Dir. Akira Kurosawa (1954)

[steege-jpt3391]

Blog Post #5: Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa

While others are generally thrown off by this three-and-a-half hour epic due to it’s length, it is definitely a treat to behold. The story follows a group of poor villagers who have been subject to being attacked and abused by nearby bandits. While they’ve tried their best to fight them off, they are out of options and look towards the city for help. Upon arriving, they realize what it is that they must do: round up some local samurai and ask for the assistance. So, the villagers gather up seven noble warriors who all vary in personality, from the calm and content Kambei to the hilarious Kikuchiyo. Through the bonds of hardship, the samurai persevere in expelling the bandits, the villagers rejoice, but what’s left of our warriors? Four of the seven have been killed on the line of duty and the other three are left alone without even a single word of thanks. While for the villagers it ended, for the Samurai, they are nothing but a shadow of the past.

The main takeaway for me with this movie was Akira Kurosawa’s commentary on the samurai class. While the villagers at the beginning serve as the main protagonists of this film, the emphasis almost shifts onto the samurai where we can analyze them individually and understand more about them. This film is so much more than a heroic tale of samurai coming to save the day, as the ending of the film is left on honestly, quite a depressing note. The last shot we see is of the graves of the four samurai who lost their lives on the line of duty which followed Kambei’s line of “We’ve lost yet again.”

This issue reflects the issue of Ronin, who are essentially masterless samurai, during the height of the Sengoku era. They are almost treated as castaways and not treated as mere samurai. Instead of serving a powerful master, they are serving poor villagers. And, these villagers don’t even thank them for their hard work. The ending was masterful and definitely highlights the juxtaposition between the villagers’ victory, and the samurai’s defeat.

While the film does take some time to really get into the action, I never found myself struggling with the long viewing time. The first time I watched this film was actually in theatres near where I lived in the UK, and I found myself being immersed from start to finish. Seven Samurai was the first classic Japanese film I ever watched (it’s been around 3ish years) so I am really glad that I had the opportunity to give this film a rewatch and put everything I’ve learned thus far about Japan into context. Looking forward to the next couple of films!