TCM’s been playing *Seven Samurai *and *Rashomon, *so I convinced my wife to sit down with me and watch my 3.5 hour digitally remastered version of the Seven Samurai and she loved it. Not that she’s any fan, by a long stretch, of the Western genre, but she caught on right away that many of our “cowboy” films from the 50s and 60s paid homage to it, especially *The Magnificent Seven. *
*Rashomon *was a little too dense for her, but she liked the effort. We wrapped the day up by watching my copies of *Yojimbo *and *Ran. *She figured out that *Ran *was Kirosawa’s version of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
The guy was truly a master of film. I had forgotten how really effective he was, especially in his usage of light and composition in black-and-white film stock. Far, far better than what we learned of feudal Japan from watching old reruns of *Shogun, *huh?
Anyway…I thought I’d stay off the politics jag today and just enjoy really, really good filmmaking. I’ve always thought *Seven Samurai *to be one of the ten best films of all time.
I’ll look up “Twilight Samurai” and watch it. “Red Beard” is awesome. Mifune could play parts like that with amazing intensity.
You and Vitus may also like “Kagemusha” greatly. Kurosawa’s body of work is legendary, and his loyalty to certain actors (Toshiro Mifune was one) was exemplary.
I’ve been a fan of Chinese, Korean and Japanese films, martial arts, and literature since I was a boy in the early 70s. I have a small collection of dai-sho (katana/wakazashi), tessen (“war” or fighting fans), calligraphy, and other items.
Seven Samurai really speaks to one’s place in a rigid society, duty and caste obligation, greed, sacrifice…you name it.
Cool, I will definitly watch Kagemusha. I also recommend Kobayashi’s “Kwaidan” if you like japanese movies, I must warn you that I couldn’t sleep easily for a few nights after watching it.
Awesome. I’ll find “Twilight” and “Kwaidan” tomorrow and my wife and I will watch them. There’s an anime version of “Seven Samurai” running around on the Internet. My oldest nephew prefers that one above all else. Sighhhh. What can I say? He’s only 21.
As far as the samurai/feudal Japan genre, we’ve hit on the best ones. Takashi Shimura, who played Kambei, the leader of the fighting men in *Seven Samurai *and Toshiro Mifune (Kikuchiyo, in Samurai) had a long relationship with Kurosawa. Shimura did a masterful turn in another great film by him entitled “Ikiru” (“to live”), as a bureaucrat working in the same boring job for years and years. Funnily, most people remember him from his turn in *Godzilla, *the original, which made its debut in 1954. He was the venerable Dr. Yamane, who discovered the truth of the goings-on that led to the appearance of the monster. Matthew Broderick’s much-weaker character in the '98 remake, which was a joke, if you ask me. Ah, well.
I’ve seen one Kurosawa film, Dreams, I believe it was titled. It was a collection of “short stories.” My college boyfriend went saw it at the Micro Movie House in Moscow Idaho in 1990. The beauty of the Micro was that all films were $1.00, tha agony was the seats were jammed packed and very lumpy. I liked the film, but so wanted to leave as I was horribly uncomfortable.
my dad’s all time favorite film. He saw it in the theatre when he was in his 20’s. We used to watch it everytime PBS aired it. Anyway, do you have the current 3disc criterion edition? I was wondering how much cleaner the new transfer is compared to the first version they had released which my dad has.
A wonderful movie, brought to my attention through
the book, “The Last Samurai” by Helen DeWitt. In the book, a single
mom uses the seven samurai as surrogate fathers for her son. Ms.
DeWitt is a lot sharper than I, and watching the movie after having
read her thoughts on the characters and director was pretty darn great.
**my dad’s all time favorite film. He saw it in the theatre when he was in his 20’s. We used to watch it everytime PBS aired it. Anyway, do you have the current 3disc criterion edition? I was wondering how much cleaner the new transfer is compared to the first version they had released which my dad has. **
Yup. The Criterion 3 disc is the one I own. It’s a bit clearer, and you can tell they went in and had some of the graininess and splotches digitized out. And the sound is better. Not that I’m a big fan of colorization of classic movies, but I sometimes wonder what *Seven Samurai *would look like. I think it’d take away from the way Kurosawa used light and shadow, though.
