Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Misa Uehara, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara
Have I Seen it Before: Never, although its legend as the spine of Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) has always lingered in the back of my mind. I’ve struggled with enjoying Kurosawa films, as I found Seven Samurai (1954) a bit of a chore to get through when I was 17. My tastes… may have expanded since then. I need to broaden my horizons.
Did I Like It: I guess I should probably start this film with a confession. I watched this while trying to complete the rest of my reviews for the Star Wars saga that I was going to post tonight. As such, I only occasionally was able to focus on the subtitles for the Japanese dialogue. I didn’t catch much of the plot, or at least the details therein.
But the film still works, and that’s probably the element most worth analysis. The feelings of the characters and the visuals that surround them are far more central to the film. It would have worked as a silent film. The dialogue is incidental to the enjoyment of the film. I can see where Lucas felt the influence of this film as he went about constructing A New Hope. Indeed, the early scripts for his film (and the comic that was eventually created based on that early material) are filled with the samurai sensibility of Kurosawa’s most popular films, like this.
It’s almost like, by the time Lucas got the opportunity to make his Buck Rogers by way of a samurai sensibility film, he would have probably preferred to make it a silent film altogether. He probably spent the rest of his career wishing he never had to write a line of dialogue.
Which would explain some of the problems he had with the prequels. Hey-yo.
But enough about the films that came after The Hidden Fortress, let’s talk about the film itself. It is vibrant and funny the tableaus of each shot are each a painting unto themselves, even when they are largely showing arid, sandy landscapes.
Sound familiar? Okay, I’ll stop.