Mature Talk: (a) (1954 ) Seven Samurai vs (b) (1960) The Magnificent Seven

[oldies8ladies]

There are two great films:

a) 1954 - Seven Samurai

and

b) 1960 - The Magnificent Seven

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a) Seven Samurai: (plot summary)

A veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers 6 other samurai to help him, and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves, and they supply the samurai with three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village.

A village is constantly attacked by well armed bandits. One day after an attack they seek the wisdom of an elder who tells them they cannot afford weapons, but they can find men with weapons, samurai, who will fight for them, if they find samurai who are in down on their luck and wondering where their next meal will come from. They find a very experienced samurai with a good heart who agrees to recruit their party for them. He selects five genuine samurai and one who is suspect but the seven return to the village to protect it from the forty plus bandits.

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b) The Magnificent Seven:

The Magnificent Seven is a John Sturges western film of 1960, a remake of Shichinin no samurai, better known as Seven Samurai. A group of hired gunmen are tasked to protect a Mexican village from bandits.

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These are two great films..............with great Asian Actors in the
Seven Samurai and great western actors in the Magnificent Seven.

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we know that we have more to this, but we are not sure what. (hehe)

[OldiesLover]

For a youngster growing up in the United States when The Magnificent Seven was released... Western movies were almost a religion to us.

Hence, this is a very difficult choice. I didn't see Seven Samurai until I was well into my 20's.

The Magnificent Seven had more of an impact on me only because of its timing in my life. I had to honestly vote for it by a very very close margin.;)

[oldies8ladies]

This movie which was like a remake of a great Asian film " Seven Samurai"

had some very FAMOUS male actors in it:

Cast Overview:

Actor Name.................. Character play in Movie:

Yul Brynner.......................Chris Adams...............(died 1985)
Eli Wallach........................Calvera
Steve McQueen.................Vin...........................(died 1980)
Charles Bronson..................Bernardo O'Reilly........(died 2003)
Robert Vaughn...................Lee
Brad Dexter.......................Harry Luck................(died 2002)
James Coburn....................Britt.........................(died 2002)


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We know that none of these men are Asian, but they were great actors and did much for the movie industry........

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[oldies8ladies]

This movie was one of the original greats from Asia:

Cast overview, first billed only:

Actor Name.............................Character play in Movie:

Takashi Shimura.....................Kambei Shimada.......(died 1982)
Toshiro Mifune........................Kikuchiyo.................(died 1997)
Yoshio Inaba..........................Gorobei Katayama....(died 1998)
Seiji Miyaquchi.......................Kyuzo.......................(died 1985)
Minoru Chiaki.........................Heihachi Hayashida...(died 1999)
Daisuke Kato..........................Shichiroji..................(died 1975)
Isao Kimura...........................Katsushiro................(died 1981)

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[idiotboy]

i find it hard to even have a polite conversation about this (altho i'm going to try, obviously). Seven Samurai is the greatest movie of all time. period. Kurosawa is the greatest director to have ever lived (yes, better than Eisenstein, better than Wong Kar Wai, better then Resnais, better even than Godard). Seven Samurai is the highpoint of Kurosawa's oeuvre (altho you could make an argument for Ikiru, or possibly Ran).

it has Shimura at the height of his acting powers and Mifune's absolute star turn (it's the role that made him huge); it has Kurosawa's typically incredible cinematography, and his bravura adaption of the western genre and the incorporation of a bushido-type ethos within that.

Magnificent Seven is a good film, and it takes the lessons of Seven Samurai and re-applies them to the western genre: but it's merely a copy, the evidence that proves the greatness of Seven Samurai - it's the point where Seven Samurai's originality get re-incorporated within the western genre.

similarly, Sturges is a very good director (The Great Escape, Ice Station Zebra), and was a good choice to direct the remake - but so many of the really powerful scenes in Magnificent Seven are shot for shot versions of Kurosawa, that it's hard to give Sturges that much credit for it.

[oldies8ladies]

In 1954 enough famous and influential titles came out to make one wonder if the planets had wandered into some celestial alignment that delivered cosmological inspiration to moviemakers everywhere.

That twelve-month span saw the release of such enduring pop favorites as:
.....Sabrina;
.....20,000 Leagues Under the Sea;
.....The Wild One
.....Carman Jones
.....The Cukor-Garland version of "A Star is Born"
.....Richard III
.....Johnny Guitar

On the International Classics at that time:
.....La Strada
.....Sansho the Bailiff

Two towering Hollywood monuments:
.....On the Waterfront
.....Rear Window.

But as good—or as great—as any of those movies may be, all of them are overshadowed (and most of them are dwarfed) by Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

Kurosawa’s martial epic remains one of the two or three great action films of all time. With its massive emotional range, dazzling technical virtuosity, and sensitivity to the natural universe, it remains after nearly fifty years a supreme example of cinema’s power to arouse and astound us.

In 16th Century Japan, an isolated farming hamlet is threatened by a large company of bandits that is pillaging the countryside. In desperation the farmers decide to recruit samurai warriors to defend their village, and though the poverty-stricken peasants can only offer food as compensation, they attract an eclectic band of seven men who accept the challenge for a variety of personal reasons. For all of their virtue and prowess, the samurai make for strange heroes by our lights: all of their actions are undercut by a whiff of futility, and their only sense of belonging comes from the temporary alliances they form in battle. Kurosawa also upends the stereotype of the farmer as a simple tiller of the earth: his peasants are psychologically stifled, secretly murderous creatures.

The story’s complications arise from the social and class differences between samurai and farmer, and these tensions play themselves out over the course of Seven Samurai’s 208-minute running time. As the samurai turn the village into a fortress and form its denizens into an army, it’s left to Kambei (Takashi Shimura), the samurais’ leader, to maintain order between the two clans as they (and we) await the return of the brigands. Kambei’s task is made no easier by the volatile personalities surrounding him.

Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), a besotted pretender to samurai status, is secretly goaded by the rage and shame of being a farmer’s son.

The farmer Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya) is a young firebrand whose temper is constantly stoked by the memory of a wife snatched away from him by the bandits. Katsushiro (Isao Kimura), the youngest of the samurai, is tentatively accepted into the group as Kambei’s apprentice, but his rawness leads him into an affair with one of the village’s girls that threatens the group’s stability.

There are other characters and subplots, equally simple in conception, that are saved from cliche by the compassion that Kurosawa sheds on them. The most distrustful and pigheaded of the farmers is allowed the dignity of his pain when his greatest fear—having his daughter seduced by a samurai—becomes a reality.

(Seven Samurai has a modern—and surprisingly bitter—sexual edge, most vividly expressed in the languorously extended shot of a woman driven half-mad by brutality as she seizes the chance to avenge herself on her captors.) Even the bandits’ deaths are made into ghastly, appalling affairs by the villagers’ ravenous appetite for revenge.

Seven Samurai contains some of the most dazzling battles ever put on film. The movie’s action scenes cover the spectrum of moral and physical complexity, from the waste of life that occurs when samurai’s pride goads him into fighting a suicidal duel, to the climactic battle staged in a freezing rainstorm as the combatants flounder at each other amidst buckets of mud. The movie breathes with alternating energies, from explosive outbursts to supple silences, from scenes of intense grief (some of the deaths in Seven Samurai don’t bear thinking about) to the vision of a higher community that appears when the samurai share their rice with village’s children.

Shot in nearly every type of weather and at all times of day, Seven Samurai is alive to the elements of nature—to cold and rain and dust and flowers. As much as through dialogue, the movie communicates through the sight of a barley field tossing in the wind, slats of firelight playing across the bodies of entwined lovers, a mountain fog through which our eyes strain to discern the shape of a samurai who’s gone missing in action. Seven Samurai is smitten with topography, and its otherworldly settings—a hillside blanketed in luminous flowers, a canyon that looks like it was carved by the hand of God just the day before yesterday—speak with an emotional clarity that erases the distance between movie and viewer.

Kurosawa’s multifaceted story is matched by his complex visual style. Seven Samurai uses deep focus in ways that make the movie "Citizen Kane" look dramatically inert, with up to three and four layers of equally emphasized activity receding into the frame, and sometimes even jutting out in front of it. (The foreground is often perforated by the tips of bamboo spears, captured in such sharp focus that they look ready to poke us in the eye.) The movie’s group compositions throw character information like confetti at the viewer, with the samurai and farmers responding to events, not in generalized expressions of emotion, but as individuals. Most of all, Seven Samurai is a movie that moves. Kurosawa whisks from scene to scene with a series of elegant wipes, and the script’s ruthless excision of expository dialogue never lets us get impatient. The movie contains so many visual riches that Kurosawa can afford to gloss over some of them: at the climax of a raid on the bandits’ hideout, he cuts away from three eye-popping shots of the burning cabins so quickly that their effect is nearly subliminal.

Only two years earlier Takashi Shimura had starred in Kurosawa’s "IKIRU" and it speaks volumes about his range that he could bring to life both the cowed, mortally ill bureaucrat of that film and the strong and vital Kambei. Yet there’s something withheld and self-effacing in his performance here, and most of the other actors follow suit, perhaps out of deference to Kurosawa’s pyrotechnics.

The one exception to this, Toshiro Mifune, has been criticized over the years for overplaying with his nose-rubbing and head-scratching and voice like a cat’s angry yowl. But Kikuchiyo serves a firm comic purpose with his Caliban-like volatility, and Mifune has many fine quiet moments, as in Kikuchiyo’s hillside encounter with an unsuspecting bandit. Seven Samurai’s most perfect performance is Seiji Miyaguchi’s as the master swordsman. Miyaguchi’s gaunt cheeks and deadened eyes are perfect attributes for the ascetic Kyuzo, and he delivers a performance as pure as Kurosawa’s conception of the character. One of the film’s most abiding images is that of Kyuzo apparently dozing under a tree moments before he must uncoil himself for battle.


In 1969’s "The Wild Bunch" Sam Peckinpah would extend Kurosawa’s use of slow-motion, rapid cutting, and telephoto lenses to develop a type of battle scene that not only drew viewers into the action but made them aware of the emotions being released in them by the violence. Beyond that, though, action film directors have shied away from the example of Seven Samurai, as if they think it gauche or dangerous to inflame audiences to a state of such sensuous excitation.

A clean, well-lit American remake of Seven Samurai was released in 1960 as "The Magnificent Seven", (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6305762511/culturevulturene) and a comparison of no two other films could be more revealing of the difference between greatness and mediocrity.

But John Sturges, who directed The Magnificent Seven, was no guiltier of ignoring the possibilities of the action film than any of today’s filmmakers are.

As we face another summer of motion pictures promising us nothing more than those disposable responses known as “thrills,” it’s worth remembering that Akira Kurosawa once captured the convulsive feeling of being alive and crammed it inside of a movie. Seven Samurai is The Portable World.

-Tom Block

Source Material: http://www.culturevulture.net/movies/SevenSamurai.htm

[oldies8ladies]

Plot Synopsis

Akira Kurosawa (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=B98309)'s epic tale concerns honor and duty during a time when the old traditional order is breaking down. The film opens with master samurai Kambei (Takashi Shimura (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=B65330)) posing as a monk to save a kidnapped farmer's child. Impressed by his selflessness and bravery, a group of farmers begs him to defend their terrorized village from bandits.

Kambei agrees, although there is no material gain or honor to be had in the endeavor. Soon he attracts a pair of followers: a young samurai named Katsushiro (Isao Kimura (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=EIsao%7CKimura)), who quickly becomes Kambei's disciple, and boisterous Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=B49015)), who poses as a samurai but is later revealed to be the son of a farmer. Kambei assembles four other samurais, including Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=B49769)), a master swordsman, to round out the group.

Together they consolidate the village's defenses and shape the villagers into a militia, while the bandits loom menacingly nearby. Soon raids and counter-raids build to a final bloody heart-wrenching battle.

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OTHER DVD Releases -

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Other Related Movies has been remade as:

The Magnificent Seven (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:30854) (1960, John Sturges)

The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:43850) (1984, Bruno Mattei) influenced:Battle Beyond the Stars (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:4291) (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami) is related to: Sanjuro (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:42821) (1962, Akira Kurosawa)

Samurai 7 [Anime Series] (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:331474) (2004)

[idiotboy]

Sanjuro has been remade several times - most recently in a dire Bruce Willis film, the name of which i have mercifully repressed; the final scene of Kitano's Zatoichi is a homage to the closing scene of Seven Samurai; and famously (or infamously, given that George Lucas spent 25 years denying it), Hidden Fortress was remade as Star Wars.

(well, all the good bits of Star Wars are from Hidden Fortress; all the other bits - ie, the rubbish bits - are Lucas' originals).

Kurosawa's output from the late 40's until the mid 60's - working in the ruins of post-war Tokyo, it has to be added - is just astounding. i don't really want to list them al, but i will :)

1965 Red Beard
1963 High and Low
1962 Sanjûrô
1961 Yojimbo
1960The Bad Sleep Well
1958 The Hidden Fortress
1957 Throne of Blood, The Lower Depths
1955 I Live in Fear
1954 Seven Samurai
1952 Ikiru
1951 The Idiot
1950 Rashômon, Scandal
1949 Stray Dog
1948 Drunken Angel

in 1965, during the making of Red Beard he had a major falling out with Toshiro Mifune, who had acted in most Kurosawa films since Stray Dog in 1949, and they never made another film together (and Kurosawa pulled out of planned co-directorship of Tora Tora Tora). but in those, what? 17 years? Kurosawa made 15 of the greatest films ever made: any director alive (with the exception of Godard, of course) would be happy to have made even one of those films; Kurosawa made 15 on the trot - in the ruins, i have to emphasis, of post-war Japan.

during this time he redefined Hollywood genres with Seven Samurai and Sanjuro (even tho he wasn't working in Hollywood), he made the last of the great noir films (The Bad Sleep Well, High and Low), he took a potshot at nuclear re-armament and the Cold War (I Live in Fear), he showed the nightmarish quality of life in Tokyo post-war (and pre-figured neo-realism) in Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, and he made some of the greatest filmic adaptions of classic literature: Dostoyevksy in The Idiot, Shakespeare in Throne of Blood. and i haven't even had space to mention Rashomon....

i could actually rave for days about Kurosawa; suffice to say that there was a retrospective of his entire oeuvre at the National Film Theatre here in London a few years ago - and the only films i missed were Sanshiro Sugata and Ikiru.

[majormilo]

Biography for Akira Kurosawa

Nickname: The Emperor Wind Man

Height: 6' 0½" (1.84 m)

Mini biography:

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, making his directorial debut in 1943. After working in a wide range of genres, he made his breakthrough film _Rashomon (1950)_ in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West.

The next few years saw the low-key, touching Ikiru (http://imdb.com/title/tt0044741/) (1952) (Living), the epic Shichinin no samurai (http://imdb.com/title/tt0047478/) (1954) (Seven Samurai) and the barbaric, riveting Shakespeare adaptation _Kumonosu jo (1957)_ (Throne of Blood), the later two showcasing the magnetic personality of Toshirô Mifune (http://imdb.com/name/nm0001536/), who also starred in the two samurai comedies Yojimbo (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055630/) (1961) and Tsubaki Sanjûrô (http://imdb.com/title/tt0056443/) (1962).

After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide (http://imdb.com/SearchBios?suicide). He survived, and made the Russian co-production Dersu Uzala (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071411/) (1975) and, with the help of admirers Francis Ford Coppola (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000338/) and George Lucas (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000184/), the samurai epic Kagemusha (http://imdb.com/title/tt0080979/) (1980), which was in many ways a dry run for Ran (http://imdb.com/title/tt0089881/) (1985), his second Shakespeare adaptation.

He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal Yume (http://imdb.com/title/tt0100998/) (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991) and Madadayo (http://imdb.com/title/tt0107474/) (1993).

Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors (William Shakespeare (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000636/), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (http://imdb.com/name/nm0234502/), Maxim Gorky (http://imdb.com/name/nm0331003/) and Evan Hunter (http://imdb.com/name/nm0402805/)) with suspicion - but he's revered by American and European film-makers, who remade:

Shichinin no samurai (http://imdb.com/title/tt0047478/) (1954), as The Magnificent Seven (http://imdb.com/title/tt0054047/) (1960);

Yojimbo (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055630/) (1961), as Per un pugno di dollari (http://imdb.com/title/tt0058461/) (1964)

Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958)_ , as Star Wars (http://imdb.com/title/tt0076759/) (1977).
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Trivia

His films are frequently copied and remade by American and European filmmakers.

In December 1971, after a period of suffering from mental fatigue and frustrated with a run of unsatisfying and sub par directing work, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrist thirty times with a razor. Fortunately, the wounds were not fatal and he made a full recovery.

Because he could not get film financing for a period of time in his career, he directed and even appeared in Japanese television commercials.

At over 6' feet tall, he was extremely large by Japanese standards, having stood a head taller than any of his colleagues.

Although the Japanese press tried to paint him as a tyrant, almost all of his casts and crews agreed he was a much more cool and detached presence on sets. Many also described him as "intense".
He was voted the 6th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him the only Asian on a list of 50 directors.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890- 1945". Pages 583-605. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Kurosawa worshipped legendary American director John Ford (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000406/), his primary influence as a filmmaker. When the two met, Ford was uncommonly pleasant to the younger Japanese filmmaker and after wards Kurosawa dressed in a similar fashion to Ford when on film sets.

Unbeknownst to many people, Kurosawa had always wanted to make a Godzilla film of his own, but the executives at Toho Co., Ltd. (the Japanese studio that produces all the Godzilla films) wouldn't let him because they feared it would cost too much.

According to his family, he rarely thought about anything other than films. Even when at home, he would sit around silently, apparently composing shots in his head.

Although he received an Honorary Award in 1990 "For cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world," Akira Kurosawa was only nominated once for a Best Director Oscar for Ran (1985). Also, his only film to have ever received the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar was for Dersu Uzala (1975)...his only film not done in Japanese (it was in Russian).

He had a son Hisao, and a daughter, Kazuko.

His movie _Dodesukaden (1970)_ , Dersu Uzala (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071411/) (1975) and Kagemusha (http://imdb.com/title/tt0080979/) (1980) were Oscar-nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film". Dersu Uzala (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071411/) (1975) won. Rashômon (http://imdb.com/title/tt0042876/) (1950) won an Honorary Award as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.

Ranked #6 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest directors ever!" [2005]

In the 1990s, he referred to the 'Kagemusha' (1980) , which some have considered a great film on its own, as a mere "dress rehearsal" for 'Ran' (1985) (both are epics about failing emperors set roughly in same historical era), with the latter film having been his passion for roughly a decade before he made it.

His two favorite actors to work with were apparently Takashi Shimura (http://imdb.com/name/nm0793766/) and, more famously, Toshirô Mifune (http://imdb.com/name/nm0001536/). Kurosawa made 16 films with Mifune (almost always in a leading role) and 19 films with Shimura (in either a leading or supporting role).

He worked with most of his cast and crew members repeatedly, similarly to the way his idol John Ford (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000406/) used the same people again and again. When Kurosawa was at his working peak, it was widely thought that if he didn't work with an actor or crew member again, the implication was that he did not like them.

As a child, he revered his elder brother Heigo. While young Akira was mainly into painting, Heigo was a film-lover and worked as a "benshi", a narrator/ commentator for foreign silent films. Akira's love for film was handed down from his brother. Unfortunately, Heigo suffered from depression and committed suicide. His brother's death was a traumatic experience for Akira and is thought to have considerably darkened his world view.

He was a fan of the films of Satyajit Ray (http://imdb.com/name/nm0006249/).

Source Material: http://imdb.com/name/nm0000041/bio

[oldies8ladies]

Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954 Japan 200mins)

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi.

Winner of the 1954 Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion and nominated in subsequent years for 2 Oscars-Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Takashi Matsuyama) and Best Costume Design (Kôhei Ezaki)-as well as for 2 British Academy of Film and Television Awards-Best Film and Best Foreign Actor (2 nominations, Toshiro Mifune and Takeshi Shimura)-Seven Samurai is widely acknowledged as one of Kurosawa's, and indeed Japan's and World cinema's, greatest films.

Kurosawa directed and edited the film and also worked on the script with long-time collaborators Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. As with so many of his projects, his involvement in Seven Samurai was extensive and indicates his powerful commitment to exploration of the issues the film broaches and to achieving the widest possible audience for that exploration. Kurosawa's recipe for this task was to make an action film that engaged the emotions and the intellect in equal and extraordinary measures.

Seven Samurai is a story about a poor farming village community in the sixteenth century Sengoku jidai era of civil strife and feuding samurai clans. Without the protection of a strong feudal warlord's samurai in these strife torn times, the village is repeatedly raided by a band of outlaws. Its crops are pillaged, its men killed and women abducted. The villagers decide to hire wandering, masterless samurai (ronin) to protect themselves from the bandits (many of whom are themselves ronin), offering only board and three meals a day as their payment. The first half of the film depicts the plight of the farmers and their difficult search in the nearby provincial town for samurai who are willing to stoop to working for their social inferiors. 'Find hungry samurai!' is the wise advice of the village elder, played by Kokuten Kodo. They eventually find one ronin, Kambei, played by the wonderful Takeshi Shimura-whose performance in this film is only bettered by his starring role in Kurosawa's Living (Ikiru, 1952). Kambei is able to recruit a team from among the ronin passing through the town.

The latter half of Seven Samurai concerns the preparations of the samurai in the village, their efforts to win the trust of the initially fearful farmers, and the final battle of the samurai-led villagers with the bandits. In thematic terms, the central hypothesis being 'tested' in this social experiment between the samurai and the peasant class is the question of the possibility of class cooperation and harmony. The stakes are not only survival, but also social and, by extension, national peace and prosperity. These stakes have as much to do with the historical era in which the film is set as they have with the post-war era of 1950s Japan. The film must be seen as an effort to address pressing questions around the nature of Japanese identity, culture, class structure and nationhood that Kurosawa and all Japanese people confronted in the wake of the Pacific war, foreign occupation and the subsequent 'reinvention' of Japan.

In typical Kurosawa fashion, these stakes are brought to life for the spectator through the dynamic and highly charged emotional conflicts of individual characters in the film. Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo is a central figure in this regard. He is an orphaned farmer's son who aspires to become a samurai (a not unrealistic goal in the turbulent social mobility of the Sengoku jidai). Rejected initially by Kambei as a member of the force he assembles to protect the village, Kikuchiyo pursues the samurai relentlessly and comically until he is finally accepted as the seventh of their group. Having done so, he performs a crucial pivotal role between the farmers and the samurai, overcoming some of the fears and suspicions that keep them dangerously disunited. But this go-between role means he exists at the site of the well-worn conflict that threatens to break up the alliance, a conflict between arrogant, dominating samurai and suspicious, resentful farmers.
In fact, this conflict is at the heart of Kikuchiyo's character. In the film's most crucial scene, Kikuchiyo presents to the other samurai armour and weaponry that the farmers had kept hidden in a secret cache, expecting them to be pleased at the discovery of these new resources. Instead they are disgusted, knowing that the material would have been stripped from the bodies of dead or murdered samurai after battle. Their anger grows and they even contemplate slaughtering the villagers. In a performance of overwhelming emotional intensity, Mifune's hitherto clownish Kikuchiyo lambasts the samurai for their ignorance and hypocrisy, explaining that while the farmers are dull, wicked, murderous and cowardly, it is the samurai who have made them so, by plundering, burning, raping, and oppressing the peasants on behalf of their warlords. As a victim of that oppression, and one who now aspires to the role of samurai, that is, the role of warrior but in principle also the role of servant and protector of the people, Kikuchiyo's passion arises from his tragic embodiment of these hierarchical differences between Japan's people, and by the same token their potential synthesis.

Space is too short to do justice to all the complexities of the film's story, or to the amazing performances of Shimura, Mifune and many of the other cast members who were part of Kurosawa's troupe of trusted actors in the 1950s and 1960s (including Minoru Chiaki who plays the samurai Heihachi and Bokuzen Hidari whose face radiates the affects of peasant fear and powerlessness as Yohei). Furthermore, the film's stunning formal and stylistic features-the influential slow motion death scenes, the reinvigoration of silent cinema narrational techniques, the dynamic spatial compositions-have hardly been mentioned.

If anything can be said about these here, it should be insisted that Kurosawa's formal experimentation and choices as director and editor are an integral part of the film's exploration of these themes of social conflict and group versus individual ethics. At the same time they maximise the film's brilliant portrayal of action and dramatic events in order to make the film as enjoyable and moving as possible.

While mention is frequently made of the influence of John Ford's wide-screen cinematography and large scale mise en scène on Kurosawa's depiction of action sequences, the importance of Eisenstein's notion of a montage of oppositions is equally significant in considering the look of Seven Samurai. (1) (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/seven.html#1) Kurosawa's dynamic camera, tracking fast-moving warriors and sweeping across battle scenes, is counter posed with static and close-up shots. Long takes are opposed to rapidly cut sequences from a number of camera angles. Like Eisenstein (another great action filmmaker), Kurosawa's editing and camera direction work together to create spectacular visual impacts and elicit complex combinations of emotions and thoughts in the spectator.

The opening of the film provides an apt example. After one farmer overhears the brigands planning to raid the village in the near future, all the villagers gather to discuss the situation. This sequence is handled by a combination of long shots of the whole group and closer shots of 2 or 3 individuals arguing about what to do. Then there is a surprising, big close-up of the face of one of the peasants, Rikichi, as he proposes to kill all the bandits as a solution to the problem. Rickichi's proposal is rejected by others as impossible and too dangerous. His hatred for the bandits is motivated by their abduction of his wife during the last raid. As he ridicules the counter proposition of begging for mercy from the bandits, Kurosawa cuts to a high angle long shot of the group with Rikichi at their centre. Rikichi then leaves the tightly formed circle of the farmers, walking outside of its bounds toward the top of screen. The following shot is a devastating recuperation of Rikichi's rebellious gesture: Kurosawa frames Rikichi, now squatting down in his misery, at a straight angle with the sitting villagers behind him. As Stephen Prince points out in The Warrior's Camera, the angle and the flattened out plane of the long shot has the effect of reuniting Rikichi with the village group he seeks to escape (2) (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/seven.html#1). As the farmers decide to consult the village elder, one of them goes out and brings Rikichi back to the group.

This is just one early example of Seven Samurai's masterful employment of combinations of camera and character movement in a dialectical and dynamic dialogue with the spectator. A film of immense emotional impact and one that as Eisenstein would have it, 'thinks in images' (and sounds I would add), its pleasures seem inexhaustible to this indefinitely repeating reviewer.

© Patrick Crogan 2000 Endnotes

(1) While Kurosawa's work has been considered in the light of the influence of Western film and culture, the reverse has also been significant. One of the real treasures exhibited by Kurosawa's oeuvre, his ability to embrace popular forms such as the action-packed chambara genre and interpret them with intelligence, subtlety and thematic sophistication has been an undoubted inspiration of many non-Japanese filmmakers. Sadly, some of the most well known Western films that have been influenced by Kurosawa, most notably in the case of Seven Samurai John Sturge's The Magnificent Seven (1960), but also George Lucas's Star Wars films (Lucas cites Hidden Fortress as a major inspiration), lack this sophisticated engagement of their viewers and underachieve on action cinema's real potential. On the other hand, Sergio Leone's adaptation of Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) in Fistful of Dollars (1964) and its sequels certainly does explore new dimensions of action film in a fashion worthy of their source.

(2) Stephen Prince's The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991

Source Material: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/seven.html

[OldiesLover]

Ahhh... I see I'm getting out voted on this one. :o

In many ways Seven Samurai is better than The Magnificent Seven. After all, M7 is a remake, which is always an uphill battle.

However, at the time of its release, 1960, the vast majority of baby boomers (which I am obviously part of) had never heard of Seven Samurai. When we sat down to watch M7, the fact that it was a remake didn't mean a thing to us. Most of us didn't even see S7 until we were in our early 20's.

Besides, the War was still a big memory and there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment going on. We were watching a Western... the fact that it was based upon a Japanese film meant nothing to us at the time. We watched it as a Western... a Western that took us to a new level of western at the time.

[oldies8ladies]

Some quotes from the actors in the MOVIE "The Magnificent Seven"-

Chris Adams
I've been offered a lot for my work, but never everything.
Graveyards are full of boys who are very young and very proud.
Sorry, I'm not in the blessing business.
Once you begin you've got to be ready for killing and more killing, and then still more killing, until the reason for it is gone.
Harry, please don't understand me so fast.
He's a good gun. We aren't going to a church social.
There's no need to apologize. We weren't expecting flowers and speeches.
If he rides in with no idea of the reception we can prepare for him... I promise you, we'll all teach him something about the price of corn.
It's only a matter of knowing how to shoot a gun. Nothing big about that.
I'll tell you what I can do: I can kill the first man who so much as whispers a word about giving up. The very first man, so help me, I'll blow his head off!
The Old Man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We'll always lose.Vin
I never rode shotgun on a hearse before.
I took a job in a grocery store. Fella says I'll make a crackerjack clerk. Crackerjack.
You know, I've been in some towns where the girls weren't very pretty. Matter of fact, I've been in some towns where they were downright ugly. But this is the first time I've ever been in a town where there are no girls at all — 'cept little ones.
You don't happen to have an older, grateful sister, do you?
Reminds me of that fella back home who fell off a ten-story building. As he was falling, people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good. So far, so good."
We deal in lead, friend.
The reason I understand your problem so well is that I walked into the same trap myself. Yeah. First day we got here I started thinking, maybe I could put my gun away. Settle down, get a little land, raise some cattle. The things these people know about me would work to my credit, it wouldn't work against me. I... just didn't want you to think you were the only sucker in town.
Fella I once knew in El Paso, one day he took all his clothes off and jumped in a mess of cactus. I asked him the same question, why? He said it seemed to be a good idea at the time.Calvera
The days of good hunting are over. Once there was cattle, horses, fruit from the trees... no more. Now I must hunt with a price on my head, Rurales at my heels.
Enough! We get the rest when we come back.
If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.
Generosity. That was my first mistake. I leave these people a little bit extra and they hire these men to make trouble.
Shows you — sooner or later you must answer for every good deed.
You hear that? We're trapped! All forty of us!
Your friends, they don't like you very much anymore. You force them to make too many decisions. With me, only one decision: do what I say.
What happens to these people will happen whether I kill you first or not.
(whispering) Just a little gesture, huh? To show these people who the real boss is. You go, then I give you the guns back. I know you won't use those guns against me. Only a crazy-man makes the same mistake twice.
Once I rob a bank in Texas. Your government get after me with a whole army. Whole army! One little bank. In Texas, only Texans can rob banks.
You came back... to a place like this. Why? A man like you...why?Chico
A man comes to him... because he respects him... 'cause he'd be proud to work with him. And he makes me look like TWO CENTS with some damn kid's game!
We ride for days to get to this nothing in the middle of nowhere. We are ready to risk our lives to help you, and you? You hide from us. Hide. From us. But it's a different story when you're in danger, huh? You might lose your precious crops. Then you flock to us, huh? Well, we are here, my compadres and I. Here we stay. And you? You prove to us that you are worth fighting for!
You know what? They'll make up a song about you and this hat. Villages like this, they make up a song about every big thing that happens. They'll sing it for years.
When I brought back the news, you should have seen the look I got from Britt. And Chris. And they have seen a thing or two in their time, and-and done them, too. They aren't men you can impress easily, oh, no! When they looked at me... I knew I was one of them at last. (after spying alone in Calvera's camp.)
I could have told you they'd sell us out! Farmers. Farmers! No honor, no loyalty, no... all they care about is their precious crops and the miserable dirt they dig in. I hate 'em. I hate 'em all.
Yes. Yes, I am one of them. But who made us the way we are, hmm? Men with guns. Men like Calvera, and... men like you. And now me. So what do you expect us to be?the Old Man
Fight. You must fight. Fight!
You must excuse them. They are farmers here. They are afraid of everyone and everything. They are afraid of rain, and no rain. The summer may be too hot, or the winter too cold. If the sow has no pigs, the farmer is afraid he may starve. If she has too many pigs, he is afraid she may starve.
They are farmers. They talk of nothing but fertilizer and women. I have never shared their enthusiasm for fertilizer. As for women, I became indifferent when I was eighty-two.
At my age, a little excitement is welcome.
Don't worry. Why would he kill me? Bullets cost money.
The fighting is over. Your work is done. For them, each season has its tasks. If there were a season for gratitude, they'd show it more.Harry Luck
All that's what's on top. What's underneath?
A dollar bill always looks as big to me as a bedspread.
So, how did Calvera ever find out about the gold mine?
Hmm... come to think of it, it was a silver mine.
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean! Aztec treasure!
We come cheaper by the bunch.
There comes a time to turn Mother's picture to the wall and get out!
You're crazy, all of you! They won't lift a finger to help. Think of the odds!Britt
You lost.
Call it.
I changed my mind.
Nobody throws me my own guns and tells me to ride on. Nobody.Lee
I have the most stylish corner of the filthy storeroom out back. That, and one plate of beans. Ten dollars a day.
The lies you tell yourself. No enemies... alive. I have lost count of my enemies.
Till you lose your nerve. You can feel it. Then you wait... for the bullet in the gun that is faster than you are
Yes. The final supreme idiocy... coming here to hide. The deserter, hiding out in the middle of a battlefield.
One. There was a time when I would have caught all three. (after snatching at 3 flies on a table.)Bernardo O'Reilly
I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.
If you can't forget about him, why don't you ride sidesaddle?
Yeah, I'm one of us, all right.
Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards! You think I'm brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers are much braver, because they carry responsibility — for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a-a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground.
I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee what will ever come of it... this is bravery. That's why I never started anything like that. That's why I never will.
See? I told you! You see your fathers?Others
I've always treated every man the same — just as another future customer. ~ Undertaker in border town
We will fight with guns if we have them. If we don't... with machetes, axes, clubs, anything! ~ Hilario
Neighbors, I drink to our friends. They armed us, fought at our side, and will forever live in our hearts. ~ Sotero
Only the dead are without fear. ~ TomasSource Material: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven

[OldiesLover]

One of the main benefits of M7 is that it brought a new group of male images to baby boomers who started to admire a whole new group of anti-establishment heros.

Yul Brynner was unique, to say the least. His image in Black... made the bad guys look intriguing. Something very different after being spoon feed as children with The Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers.

Steve McQueen became an anti-establishment hero to us, all starting with M7. He helped open the door for the Generation Gap coming on fast at the time.

Charles Bronson showed us the World of Cold and Controlled Violence. Later on, his Death Wish series exposed us to some hard facts at the time.

Robert Vaughn came back at us as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which branded him as an establishment guy verse the other anti-heros of M7, something that stagnated his career to this day.

James Coburn became our anti-establishment wit. His sense of humor helped shape our perspective of the older generation.

It cannot be underestimated what M7 did, or what would have been... if it hadn't been produced in the shadow of S7.

[oldies8ladies]

Yul Brynner was unique, to say the least. His image in Black... made the bad guys look intriguing. Something very different after being spoon feed as children with The Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers.

Oldies3Ladies say: Yul Brynner was very active actor who was also famous for his role as the King in "The King and I" which in some ways hurt him also, but then again, he had a very active life and was in over

Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances. Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease the gullible.

It was not until the publication Empire and Odysseu by his son Yul 'Rock' Brynner in 2006 that many of the details of Brynner's early life became clear.
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Steve McQueen became an anti-establishment hero to us, all starting with M7. He helped open the door for the Generation Gap coming on fast at the time.

Oldies3ladies says: He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 25 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular culture.

The young McQueen appeared as Vin, alongside Yul Brynner, in the star-laden "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and effectively hijacked the lead from the bigger star by ensuring he was nearly always doing something in every shot he and Brynner were in together, such as adjusting his hat or gun belt.

He was back in another western, Nevada Smith (1966), again with Malden, and then he gave what many consider to be his finest dramatic performance as loner US Navy sailor Jake Holman in the superb "The Sand Pebbles (1966) (Which is about china also)).

He married three times and had a lifelong love of motor racing, once remarking, "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting."
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Charles Bronson showed us the World of Cold and Controlled Violence. Later on, his Death Wish series exposed us to some hard facts at the time.

Oldies3ladies says: The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features - one film critic described his rugged looks as "a Clark Gable who had been left out in the sun too long" - Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinski, one of 14 children of struggling Polish immigrant parents in Pennsylvania (his father was a coal miner).

He completed high school and joined his father in the mines (an experience that resulted in a lifetime fear of being in enclosed spaces) and then served in WW II.

Mexican gunslinger Bernardo O'Reilly in the smash hit western The Magnificent Seven (1960), and hired him again as tunnel rat Danny Velinski for the WWII POW big budget epic The Great Escape (1963).

Was also in one of the quirkier examples of international casting, alongside Japansese screen legend Toshiro Mifune (who was in S7) in the western Soleil Rouge (1971) (aka "Red Sun").

However, the film that proved to be a breakthrough for both Bronson came in 1974 with the release of the controversial Death Wish (1974) (written with the actor Henry Fonda in mind, who was disgusted by the script). The US was at the time in the midst of rising street crime, and audiences flocked to see a story about a mild-mannered architect who seeks revenge for the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter by gunning down hoods, rapists and killers on the streets of New York City. So popular was the film that it spawned four increasingly inferior sequels over the next 20 years.
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Robert Vaughn came back at us as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which branded him as an establishment guy verse the other anti-heros of M7, something that stagnated his career to this day.

Oldies3Ladies says: Despite being in such popular films, Robert Vaughn generally found work on television. He has appeared over 200 times in guest roles in the late 1950s to early 1960s. It was in 1963 that he received his first major role in "The Lieutenant" (1963). It was due to his work in this show that producer Norman Felton offered him the role of Napoleon Solo in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. " (1964). Four extremely successful years (1964-68) followed as the series became one of the most popular TV shows of the 1960s. He is currently in the TV show from England called " HUSTLE" which is very good where he is a con man.


James Coburn became our anti-establishment wit. His sense of humor helped shape our perspective of the older generation.

Oldies3Ladies says: Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the mega-hit "The Magnificent Seven" (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgewick.

The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966)

However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.

Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card playing and enjoying fine Cuban cigars!
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source material: www.imdb.com (http://www.imdb.com)

[OldiesLover]

Here is picture of Steve McQueen and James Coburn being pallbearers at Bruce Lee's Furneral.

Bruce Lee called himself... The Oriental Steve McQueen.

Actually, Steve McQueen studied under both Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. He worked his way up to taking his test for 3rd Degree Black Belt, when his attorney informed him that if he ever punched anybody out... he would lose the lawsuit. :eek:

He never took the test. ;)

By the way... Despite the women he married, he was known for his intense interest in Asian women.

[oldies8ladies]

They make this movie Seven Samurai into a game also -
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"SEVEN SAMURAI 20XX" is a combat-oriented action adventure based on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 movie, "The Seven Samurai".

Players control the young masterless Samurai NATOE as he confronts an army of mechanical beasts laying siege to humanity's last surviving city.

Natoe slowly discovers that he must protect the "Holy Child," Earth's last hope. To do this, he must unite and lead a group of samurai warriors against treacherous enemy forces. Gameplay includes several different ancient martial arts forms. The game's designers consulted with Akira Kurosawa's son, Hisao, during production to ensure authenticity.

French comic artist Moebius designed character concepts, and Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto delivered the soundtrack.

[oldies8ladies]

More History on "Seven Samurai" -
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Without a doubt, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) is the most famous samurai film ever made. It spawned countless imitators all over the world, including Hollywood (most famously remade as the also legendary western, The Magnificent Seven). More importantly, it stands as a powerful statement on the nature of loyalty and honour and a condemnation of the nature of oppression and the futility of war.

A 16th century Japanese village has been ravaged by land tax, forced labour, war, drought and now a deadly band of bandits who take their rice and barley, leaving them with nothing to show for their hard work. The villagers are desperate and heartbroken. They debate about whether to fight back or continue to meekly accept their lot in life. The village elder recommends that they hire hungry samurai to help, with the sage (if not slightly funny) metaphor, “Even bears come down from the mountains when they’re hungry.”

Kurosawa doesn’t sugarcoat the farmers’ impoverished conditions. These are extremely trying times for them and it is visible on the close-ups of their fearful, tired and angry faces. They have nothing left to lose and it makes us extremely sensitive to their cause. A glimmer of hope comes with the arrival of Kambei (Shimura), a veteran samurai passing through and who ends up quickly dispatching a thief who takes one of the villagers’ babies. It is at this point that they know they have found someone who might be sympathetic to their plight.

Accompanying him (sort of) is a young man hoping to be his apprentice and a wild and impulsive samurai by the name of Kikuchiyo (Mifune). Kambei is a thoughtful tactician who figures that they’ll need at least seven samurai to have any kind of chance against forty bandits. He’s a decent man and Takashi Shimura brings a quiet dignity to the role. Kikuchiyo, on the other hand, is in it for the challenge and the visceral thrill of battle. Toshiro Mifune attacks his role with wild abandon, stealing every scene he’s in as well as providing a lot of the film’s lighter moments (especially when he’s drunk). He brings a real physicality to the role which is a nice contrast to Shimura’s more intellectual approach. They play well off each other as Mifune gleefully chews up the scenery while Shimura shows restraint.

Kambei proceeds to recruit six other samurai, each with their own strengths and own unique traits. He is up front with them all: there is no chance of monetary reward or rank, just enough food to eat for as long as they fight. They also stand a real chance of not surviving this battle against such overwhelming odds. Once Kambei has picked the men he needs, they proceed to draw up plans in the hopes of succeeding against insurmountable odds.

Seven Samurai takes its time introducing us to the samurai and setting up the villagers’ dilemma. This allows us to get to know not just the villagers and to sympathize with them but the samurai as well. Kurosawa also uses the film’s lengthy running time to gradually build the tension towards the bandits’ attack. Because we have spent so much time with these characters, there is a genuine concern over what will happen to them whey they finally confront the bandits.

Who will live and who will die?

Kurosawa subverts the samurai mythology by presenting them as tragic-heroic figures who know better than to fight to the bitter end. Even at the film’s conclusion, Kambei says, “In the end, we’ve lost this battle too. I mean, the victory belongs to those peasants, not to us.” He realizes that they were fighting for the greater good and not for money or for glory.

Source Material: Seven Samurai: Criterion Collection