Reeling Backward: Seven Samurai (1954)

A new 4K restoration provides a stunning revelation of Akira Kurosawa's epic vision, and a perfect opportunity to rediscover this 70-year-old masterwork of pure cinema.

Who do I think I am, presuming to write something about Akira Kurosawa’s towering masterpiece “Seven Samurai” seventy years after its release? Millions and millions of words have already been written about Kurosawa, and by better and more well-versed film scholars than I. You certainly don’t need the opinion of a Midwestern dude in 2024 to tell you whether or not it’s a good film. The collective conclusion of all of film fandom is a resounding cry of adulation.

Still . . . there is always something new to find in a work like “Seven Samurai,” and there probably can never be enough written about such an essential text of film history, by one of its most influential directors. And it’s the right time to discover “Seven Samurai” anew, or for the first time, since its long-awaited 4K restoration is making its way across North America in 2024 for its 70th anniversary, after a special screening at Cannes in May. 

In my home city of Indianapolis, it has already come and gone after a whirlwind single weekend of screening exclusively at the Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, Indy’s splendid gathering place for movie nerds. I saw it there with my friend and fellow FilmYapper Matthew Socey. But there are many more opportunities to see “Seven Samurai” across the continent throughout the rest of the summer and fall of 2024, and if it’s coming to a cinema near you, get your tickets now.

Since this North American release is distributed through Janus Films, this inevitably suggests that a 4K edition for home viewing will soon follow through the Criterion Collection, the home of “Seven Samurai” in every digital format since LaserDisc. No release date has yet been announced for this, but as soon as it is, it should be at the top of every list for collectors of movies on physical media. 

A transformational legacy

The influence of Akira Kurosawa, and “Seven Samurai” in particular, can hardly be overstated. Sidney Lumet once compared Kurosawa to Beethoven; Steven Spielberg - in a quote included in the trailer for this re-release - called him “the pictorial Shakespeare.” This might sound hyperbolic about almost any other filmmaker, but like Beethoven or Shakespeare, Kurosawa is a transformational figure of his art form. Perhaps this is why, in this writer’s opinion, Kurosawa is the greatest cinematic interpreter of Shakespeare (sorry, Welles, Olivier, and Branagh), despite the fact that none of his three Shakespeare adaptations features a single word of the Bard’s plays. Kurosawa’s revolutionary and inventive visual language is to film what Shakespeare is to the written word. 

Indeed, as with Shakespeare and English literature, it is simply impossible to imagine the last seven decades of film history without Kurosawa’s influence. “Seven Samurai” alone has spawned countless remakes and translations in film, television, even video games, from John Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven” to, yes, Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life.” In a larger sense, without Kurosawa, there would be no Sergio Leone “Spaghetti Westerns” and no “Star Wars” – George Lucas was famously inspired by Kurosawa in general and “The Hidden Fortress” in particular, so much so that he originally asked Kurosawa’s most frequent acting partner Toshirô Mifune to play Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kurosawa even invented a whole subgenre of storytelling with 1950’s “Rashomon.” Any time you see the same story retold from the perspectives of multiple characters, you’re seeing a narrative technique that originated with that film. 

Enough of this, what about the movie?

“Seven Samurai” is a master class in filmmaking. You could learn almost everything you need to know about the fundamentals of making a great film from this single screen epic: 

Writing: 

Everyone now knows the story of “Seven Samurai.” A poor farming village is plagued by a merciless gang of bandits in war-torn 16th century Japan, and recruits a ragtag band of down-and-out samurai (more accurately, ronin) to help drive them away and ensure their survival. The core story has become an archetype of its own, but it is in the details where “Seven Samurai” still stands above all its imitators. Kurosawa’s airtight screenplay, written with partners Hideo Oguni and Shinobu Hashimoto, economically introduces us not only to the seven titular warriors, but also the farmers and a host of supporting characters, and manages to balance them all throughout. 

We find each character smack in the middle of their own story, eschewing tedious exposition for action that reveals exactly who each one is, like the laughing, log-splitting Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki), or the taciturn master duelist Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi). As their stories all unfold through action, we come to understand who they all are and what’s at stake for them individually and collectively, so we’re invested in everyone’s fate.

Acting: 

The acting in “Seven Samurai” is both heightened to fit the epic scope of the story and subtle enough to reveal layers to every character on screen. To detail every character would take much too long, but the cast is anchored expertly by the tension between Takashi Shimura’s leader Kambei and the explosive Kikuchiyo, played by the aforementioned screen legend Toshirô Mifune.

When we find Kambei, he is in the process of shaving his head to disguise himself as a monk in order to save a kidnapped child, and there is a monastic streak of restraint and asceticism to Kambei throughout, with patience and reserve formed by long years of fighting. Yet his still waters run deep - just watch his wistful eyes as he tells a friend that the fight for the village may finally be the battle that kills him.

Kikuchiyo is his opposite in nearly every way, a barely controllable wild man who provides much of the movie’s comic relief as his clownish behavior lands him in trouble over and over again – but he, too, has hidden depths which drive his desire to save the village. 

Together, Shimura and Mifune form the central yin and yang that hold the sprawling cast together. My esteemed colleague Mr. Socey noted that it is always surprising to see Mifune, later associated with more laconic and “cool” characters like Sanjuro from “Yojimbo,” as such a manic and excitable character in this early role. That’s just the kind of range Mifune had.

Cinematography and direction: 

It has been said that you can pause any frame of “Seven Samurai” and find a perfectly composed photograph. Absolutely everything in the frame reflects Kurosawa’s careful and intentional planning. There are no wasted shots, no movement without purpose. It is impossible to convey Kurosawa’s visual mastery in words alone, but here are just a few of his masterstrokes.

Kurosawa often keeps multiple characters in focus on different planes of action, close up and far away simultaneously, revealing character relationships through positioning as they move through the frame in relation to one another. 

There is also nearly always something moving in the shot, so even when characters are still, the movement of the environment around them stirs drama. At the risk of belaboring the Shakespeare connection, Kurosawa’s direction seemingly provides the “muse of fire” that the Prologue from “Henry V” so desperately wished for, something cinema can do that the stage cannot. It seems the very elements are often at Kurosawa’s command. Rain, wind, fire, and the very landscape itself move around and among the people on screen to reveal the turmoil in their souls, from a wind-whipped samurai funeral to young lovers embracing against the background of a raging watchfire. Kurosawa’s camera even moves with characters to tell stories in single takes that most would tell through cross-cutting between shots. 

Speaking of cutting, Kurosawa edited his own film, and it is in the editing that he keeps a three-and-a-half-hour story moving at a pace that never lets the audience feel the full length of the proceedings. Kurosawa often cuts on motion, picking up one shot where the last left off, making for almost invisible cuts that flow beautifully and relentlessly through to the thrilling final battle against the bandit army. 

The restoration - a revelation

So, why is this worth seeing after all these years, and what’s so special about the 4K restoration? Well, context matters. This is a story conceived for the big screen and meant to be viewed that way, and everything about the way “Seven Samurai” is built demands an epic presentation. I have personally never been able to see this film on the big screen before this re-release tour. The first time I saw it was on public television, on my parents’ old 20-inch Zenith TV — the limits of the format and the screen made many of the visuals simply hard to see, let alone appreciate fully.

In TV broadcast, the film’s many night shots were either impossibly murky or blinding as images of fire resulted in blown-out blobs of white on the screen, which even made the white subtitles hard to read at times. I missed a lot of detail and nuance, though part of that might also have been the fact that I was just 12 or 13 at the time. Still, there was something compelling enough to keep me interested, and since then I’ve owned “Seven Samurai” on both DVD and Blu-Ray as Criterion has released them over the years. With better and better home theatre setups over the years I’ve been able to discover more and more. 

Even after all that, though, Toho’s 4K restoration - which has been around in Japan since 2016 but has just now worked its way westward - is a stunning revelation. A well-done 4K restoration is like creating a brand-new and pristine 35mm print of the film that will never be scratched or damaged, will never fade or warp. In many ways it’s a better visual presentation than was even possible when it was first released – a Platonic ideal of the vision that originated in Kurosawa’s mind, transferred eternally to a digital time capsule. 

The astonishing detail and contrast that the ultra high-definition rendering enables can give us a clarity that may literally not have been visible until now. “Black and white” is insufficient to describe the images that pop off the screen, as every shade and grade between those two extremes provides unprecedented depth and texture. The menacing silhouettes of the bandits against an evening sky open the film with a thrill of shadow and violent motion. Sunlight sparkles on the edge of a bared sword. A woman’s dark black hair is perfectly discrete against the darkness of the building behind her. A field of spring flowers provides a riot of bright cheer, even without the full Technicolor of Hollywood epics of the era. The mud-drenched final battle still allows us to see every visceral detail of Kurosawa’s impeccably choreographed action. And of course, seeing all this on a full-sized movie screen gives the story the epic sweep it deserves. Every film lover should see “Seven Samurai” this way if they possibly can. 

So, in case you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this, here is the link to find tickets in your area again so you don’t have to scroll back up. No more words now. Just see it if you can. You’re welcome.