Seven Samurai

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Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai)

 

 

 

 

 

                 

 

Seven Samurai is directed and written by Akira Kurosawa and released in April 26, 1954 in Japan and November 19, 1956 in the United States.
Plot
The story begins with the bandits thinking of taking a villages food, but decides to wait until it is harvest time instead. One of the farmers overhears and tells others, they become unsure about what to do. After some time the elder decides they should fight and hire samurai to do so. The only thing they can offer the samurai is a meal and nothing more than that. A few men travel to the city to find samurai, but find it extremely difficult. They cross one samurai named Kambei who accepts and leads them in their quest and finds other samurai. Kambei believes they can defend the village with seven samurai, but before leaving the city they are only able to find five more and picked up a strange follower named Kikuchiyo. Unforunately fear has caused the villagers to hide, until Kikuchiyo causes a great deal of trouble and the villagers run to the samurai for aid. At this point Kikuchiyo is thought less as a clown and more as an able body and becomes the seventh samurai. As they prepare for the attack many issues between the villagers and samurai arise. The samurai only decide to stay after Kikuchiyo's personal story is known. The movie continues with attacks lead by the samurai and bandits until only three survive and the bandits are gone.

 

 

 

 

 

Cast

Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada

 

Yoshio Inaba as Gorōbei Katayama

 

Daisuke Kato as Shichirōji

 

Minoru Chiaki as Heihachi Hayashida

 

Isao Kimura as Katsushirō Okamoto

 

Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyūzō

 

Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo

 

Kokuten Kodo as Gisaku (Village Elder)

 

Bokzen Hidari as Yohei

 

Kamatari Fujiwara as Manzo

 

Keiko Tsushima as Shino

 

Yoshio Tsuchiya as Rikichi

 

Yukikio Shimazaki as Rikichi’s Wife

 

Yoshio Kosugi as Mosuke

 

Shinpei Takagi as Bandit Chief

 

 

Interesting Points

There are many ideas within the Seven Samurai that need to be considered when watching the movie.

  • The movie takes place during where there are bandits and many ronin wandering about. Where did all the ronin come from?
  • The villagers ask many samurai if they wish to aid them, but are denied. What is an honorable battle and what should be the price to be paid for a samurai's services? Is a meal really enough?
  • In the movie a character turns out to be a farmer's son and does not have a samurai lineage. Later this same character is accepted as a samurai, at this point does ones spirit determine if they are a samurai or lineage? All the other samurai are from some line or have experienced battle.
  • Consider how the samurai are treated throughout the movie by the villagers and even villagers' thoughts before they arrive.

 

 

Related Products

The Magnificent Seven (Film) Directed by John Sturges

 

Samurai Seven (Anime) GONZO Studio

 

 

 

 

 

IMDB

 

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