Seven Samurai

FRI May 14 4:30 pm Konvikt / film hall / free admission

SEVEN SAMURAI
Shichinin no samurai
Japan 1954

director Akira Kurosawa
screenplay Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto
director of photography Asakazu Nakai
editor Akira Kurosawa
music Fumio Hajasaka
cast Toshiró Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Seidzhi Mijaguchi, Minoru Chiaki,
Daisuke Kató, Ko Kimura, Joshio Inaba, Kamatari Fudzhiwara, Keiko Cushima

 

Akira Kurosawa's celebrated film, regarded by many to be the major achievement of Japanese cinema, is an epic that evokes the cultural upheaval brought on by the collapse of Japanese militarism in the 16th century, also echoing the sweeping cultural changes occurring in the aftermath of the American Occupation. The plot is deceptively simple. A village of farmers is beleaguered by a horde of bandits. In desperation the farmers decide to hire itinerant samurai to protect their crops and people and see off the bandits. There had never been a Japanese film in which peasants hired samurai, or an evocation of the social transformation that made such an idea credible. There are six samurai and one who is accepted as such. Together they reflect the ideals and values of a noble class near the point of extinction.


Seven Samurai is a captivating drama with elaborate plot and narrative economy. With such measure of dramatic suspense, image structuring, soundtrack use and minute psychology of characters, we indeed see Kurosawa at his artistic best. For the first time, the director put to use a system of shots from parallel cameras to make the most out of dramatic impression on viewers from battle scenes in the final cut.