The Seven Samurai movie review (1954) | Roger Ebert (2024)

Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954) is not only agreat film in its own right, but the source of a genre that would flow throughthe rest of the century. The critic Michael Jeck suggests that this was thefirst film in which a team is assembled to carry out a mission--an idea whichgave birth to its direct Hollywood remake, "The Magnificent Seven,"as well as "The Guns of Navarone," "The Dirty Dozen" andcountless later war, heist and caper movies. Since Kurosawa's samurai adventure"Yojimbo" (1960) was remade as "A Fistful of Dollars" andessentially created the spaghetti Western, and since this movie and Kurosawa's"The Hidden Fortress" inspired George Lucas' "Star Wars"series, it could be argued that this greatest of filmmakers gave employment toaction heroes for the next 50 years, just as a fallout from his primarypurpose.

Thatpurpose was to make a samurai movie that was anchored in ancient Japaneseculture and yet argued for a flexible humanism in place of rigid traditions.One of the central truths of "Seven Samurai" is that the samurai andthe villagers who hire them are of different castes and must never mix. Indeed,we learn that these villagers had earlier been hostile to samurai--and one ofthem, even now, hysterically fears that a samurai will make off with hisdaughter. Yet the bandits represent a greater threat, and so the samurai arehired, valued and resented in about equal measure.

Whydo they take the job? Why, for a handful of rice every day, do they risk theirlives? Because that is the job and the nature of the samurai. Both sides are boundby the roles imposed on them by society, and in To the Distant Observer, hisstudy of Japanese films, Noel Burch observes: "masoch*stic perseverance inthe fulfillment of complex social obligations is a basic cultural trait ofJapan." Not only do the samurai persevere, but so do the bandits, whocontinue their series of raids even though it is clear the village iswell-defended, that they are sustaining heavy losses, and that there must beunprotected villages somewhere close around. Like characters in a Greektragedy, they perform the roles they have been assigned.

Twoof the movie's significant subplots deal with rebellion against socialtradition. Kikuchiyo, the high-spirited samurai played by Toshiro Mifune as arambunctious showoff, was not born a samurai but has jumped caste to becomeone. And there is a forbidden romance between the samurai Katsushiro (IsaoKimura) and a village girl (ironically, the very daughter whose father was soworried). They love each other, but a farmer's daughter cannot dream ofmarrying a ronin; when they are found together on the eve of the final battle,however, there are arguments in the village to "understand the youngpeople,” and an appeal to romance--an appeal designed for modern audiences andunlikely to have carried much weight in the 1600s when the movie is set.

Kurosawawas considered the most Western of great Japanese directors (too Western, someof his Japanese critics sniffed). "Seven Samurai" represents a greatdivide in his work; most of his earlier films, Jeck observes, subscribe to theJapanese virtues of teamwork, fitting in, going along, conforming. All hislater films are about misfits, noncomformists and rebels. The turning point canbe seen in his greatest film, "Ikiru" (1952), in which a bureaucrat spendshis days in the rote performance of meaningless duties but decides when he isdying to break loose and achieve at least one meaningful thing.

Thatbureaucrat was played by Takashi Shimura--who, incredibly, also plays Kambei,the leader of the seven samurai. He looks old and withered in the 1952 picture,tough and weathered in this one. Kurosawa was loyal to his longtimecollaborators, and used either Shimura, Mifune, or often both of them, in everymovie he made for 18 years.

In"Seven Samurai," both actors are essential. Shimura's Kambei is theveteran warrior, who in an early scene shaves his head to disguise himself as apriest in order to enter a house where a hostage is being held. (Did this scenecreate the long action-movie tradition of opening sequences in which the herowades into a dangerous situation unrelated to the later plot?) He spends therest of the movie distractedly rubbing his bristling head during moments ofpuzzlement. He is a calm, wise leader and a good strategian, and we follow thebattles partly because he (and Kurosawa) map them out for us, walk us throughthe village's defenses and keep count as the 40 bandits are whittled down oneby one. Mifune's character, Kikuchiyo, is an overcompensator. He arrivesequipped with a sword longer than anyone else's and swaggers around holding itover his shoulder like a rifleman. He is impulsive, brave, a showoff whoquickly assembles a fan club of local kids who follow him around. Mifune washimself a superb athlete and does some difficult jumps and stunts in the movie,but his character is shown to be a hopeless horseman. (As a farmer's son,Kikuchiyo would not have had an opportunity as a youth to learn to ride.) Onerunning gag involves Kikuchiyo's inability to master an unruly local horse;there is a delightful moment where horse and rider disappear behind a barriertogether, and emerge separately.

Themovie is long (207 minutes), with an intermission, and yet it moves quicklybecause the storytelling is so clear, there are so many sharply definedcharacters, and the action scenes have a thrilling sweep. Nobody couldphotograph men in action better than Kurosawa. One of his particular trademarksis the use of human tides, sweeping down from higher places to lower ones, andhe loves to devise shots in which the camera follows the rush and flow of anaction, instead of cutting it up into separate shots. His use of closeups insome of the late battle scenes perhaps was noticed Orson Welles, who in"Falstaff” conceals a shortage of extras by burying the camera in aKurosawian tangle of horses, legs, and swords.

Repeatedviewings of "Seven Samurai" reveal visual patterns. Consider theirony, for example, in two sequences that bookend the first battle with thebandits. In the first, the villagers have heard the bandits are coming, andrush around in panic. Kambei orders his samurai to calm and contain them, andthe ronin run from one group to the next (the villagers always run in groups,not individually) to herd them into cover. Later, after the bandits have beenrepulsed, a wounded bandit falls in the village square, and now the villagersrush forward with delayed bravery to kill him. This time, the samurai hurryabout pushing them back. Mirrored scenes like that can be found throughout themovie.

Thereis also an instinctive feeling for composition. Kurosawa constantly uses deepfocus to follow simultaneous actions in the foreground, middle and background.Often he delineates the distance with barriers. Consider a shot where thesamurai, in the foreground, peer out through the slats of a building and acrossan empty ground to the sight of the bandits, peering in through the slats of abarrier erected against them. Kurosawa's moving camera often avoids cuts inorder to make comparisons, as when he will begin on dialogue in a closeup,sweep through a room or a clearing, and end on a closeup of another characterwho is the point of the dialogue.

Manycharacters die in "Seven Samurai," but violence and action are notthe point of the movie. It is more about duty and social roles. The samurai atthe end have lost four of their seven, yet there are no complaints, becausethat is the samurai's lot. The villagers do not much want the samurai aroundonce the bandits are gone, because armed men are a threat to order. That is thenature of society. The samurai who fell in love with the local girl is usedsignificantly in the composition of the final shots. First he is seen with hiscolleagues. Then with the girl. Then in an uncommitted place not with the samurai,but somehow of them. Here you can see two genres at war: The samurai movie andthe Western with which Kurosawa was quite familiar. Should the hero get thegirl? Japanese audiences in 1954 would have said no. Kurosawa spent the next 40years arguing against the theory that the individual should be the instrumentof society.