Comprehensive information and links about Shichinin no samurai

Shichinin no samurai , 1954Shichinin no samurai is a movie by Akira Kurosawa starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune. The film takes place in the war-ridden Japan of the 16th century (specifically, 15871588), where a village of farmers looks for ways to ward off a band of marauding robbers. Since they do not know how to fight, they hire seven because he wanted to make a real jidaigeki, a period-film that would present the past as meaningful, while also being an entertaining film. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the film is Kurosawa's use of the camera. In one scene, the samurai form a vignette, grouped around a campfire. There is long exchange and the characters move about and interact. At the end of the scene they become still and a new vignette is presented. This is all achieved in a single shot, a tribute to the skill of director, actors, cameraman and all the other technicians.

is widely regarded as a significant film in many respects. It is regarded by many as one of Akira Kurosawa's greatest achievements. Both on a national and international level, it is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese films ever made, and has been declared the best Japanese movie by many organizations and polls. It is also one of the few Japanese films to become widely known in the West, and is the subject of both popular and critical acclaim; it consistently ranks in the top ten movies on the IMDb Top 250 List and was voted one of the Directors' Top Ten movies in 2002.

The movie was also an important milestone in movie history. The single largest undertaking by a Japanese filmmaker at the time, it was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for the industry. Many regard it as the epitome of the action movie, defining such plot elements as the recruitinggathering of heroes who each display a select talent to form a team that is expected to perform a particular task, a device since used in many other action movies (such as ). Other plot devices such as the reluctant hero, romance between a local girl and youngest hero, and the nervousness of the common citizenry had appeared in other films before this but meshed perfectly in this film. Its use of such cinematographic elements as slow motion and panning battle shots helped to create a movie that would influence cinema worldwide. After the earlier success of , this movie solidified Kurosawa's reputation as a talent in worldwide film circles. In the decades after its release, "Six of The Seven Samurai. From left to right, Katsushiro, Kikuchiyo, Shichiroji, Kyuzo, Heihachi, and Kambei." Heihachi Hayashida (Minoru Chiaki) — an amiable samurai, of lesser skill, but who retains good cheer in the face of adversity

The story unfolds gradually, and the heroes are not the cardboard cutouts popular in some action movies. There is a chemistry developing between the villagers and their helpers, and a fairly continuous role reversal. For instance, to attract the samurai into helping them cheaply, the villagers have to act dumb and poor. Later, when the samurai find out what the villagers are really like and think of rebelling against their clients, the clownish samurai Kikuchiyo turns around and shows his real intelligence by convincing his fellow warriors of their need to fight for their clients. At the same time, when the samurai learn that they were getting all the best food while the peasants were subsisting on inferior supplies, they share their food with their employers.

The film's climax is a battle scene, in which the samurai and villagers successfully drive off the attackers. However, four of the hired defenders do not survive the victory, and the remaining three are left to contemplate the village's victory celebration while ruefully noting that the villagers, while grateful for having preserved their land and their families, will not have much use for the warriors now that the fighting is done.

Original and edited cuts of film

While the initial Japanese release of the film ran 207 minutes long, edited versions where shown in international markets. An edited version of 160 minutes was shown in many countries except the UK and US which originally showed 150 minute and 141 minute versions respectively. A rerelease version of 190 minutes long was shown in the UK in 1991 and near-complete 203 minute version was re-released in the U.S. in 2002. A Criterion DVD version of the film is currently available containing the complete original version of the film (207 minutes).

Fields in front. The village is wide open to horsemen... until the fields are flooded. One guard for each direction takes four. Two more as a reserve. You'll need at least... seven, including me.What do you think of farmers? You think they're saints? Hah! They're foxy beasts! They say, "We've got no rice, we've no wheat. We've got nothing!" But they have! They have everything! Dig under the floors! Or search the barns! You'll find plenty! Beans, salt, rice, sake! Look in the valleys, they've got hidden warehouses! They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They're nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy, and mean! God damn it all! But then who made them such beasts? You did! You samurai did it! You burn their villages! Destroy their farms! Steal their food! Force them to labour! Take their women! And kill them if they resist! So what should farmers do?There are only three houses beyond the bridge and there are twenty in the village. We cannot endanger twenty because of three. ... And if the village is destroyed, those three will not be safe anyway. ... War is like that. If the defence is for everyone, each individual will be protected. The man who thinks only of himself, destroys himself. From now on such desertion will be punishedA good fort needs a gap. The enemy must be lured in. So we can attack them. If we only defend, we lose the war.The only three surviving Samurai were the first three title character actors to die in real life: Daisuke Kato (Shichiroji) died in 1975, Isao Kimura (Katsushiro) died in 1981 and Takashi Shimura (Kambei) died in 1982.Minoru Chiaki (Heihachi Hayashida) was the last surviving star at the time of his death in 1999. Ironically, his character was the first of the seven killed in the film.In one scene of the film, Kikuchiyo Toshiro Mifune shouts at the rest of the samurai because of a comment from Kyuzo, who wished to punish all of the farmers for robbing a samurai graveyard. This sequence is something of a personal apology from Akira Kurosawa, speaking as one of samurai lineage, to the descendents of the farmers and civilians of Japan for the centuries of suffering they endured at the hands of the samurai class.The Toshiro Mifune character was an inspiration for a Danish movie called Mifunes sidste sang (roughly translated "Mifune's last song"), about a successful and fashionable business man who tries to hide his farming background from his friends.Juzo Itami's film Tampopo has references to both this film and the Spaghetti Westerns that Kurosawa was an inspiration for. by Robert B. Parker also follows this pattern. Parker's detective hero Spenser gathers a group of six tough guys (all of whom had appeared in earlier novels in the series) to defend a small Arizona community."The Seven Samurai" is also a used as a nickname for the seven astronomers (Alan Dressler, Sandra Faber, Donald Lynden-Bell, Roberto Terlevich, Roger Davies, Gary Wegner and David Burstein) who first postulated the existence of the Great Attractor, a huge, diffuse region of material around 250 million light years away that results in the observed motion of our local galaxies.Million also featured another character named after Kikuchiyo as a boss in the game's fourth level (his name is shortened to Kikucho in the English language version).A high school independent filmmaker's club adapted the movie to a Star Wars theme, calling it 'Seven Jedi'.In Marvel comics, and more precisely in the Earth X continuity, Iron Man built seven giant robots which he called "The Seven Silver Samurai". The name pays homage to both the "Seven Samurai", and Marvel's own Silver SamuraiIn issue 39 of David Lapham's independant comic 'Stray Bullets', a ronin Amy Racecar (the fantastic imaginary alter-ego of the series 'main' character) meets Kikuchiyo as he is following the other six samuari and they have a brief conversation. The remainder of the issue is more a strange take on Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo'.