Seven Samurai

Village Of The Doomed

Seven Samurai
aka Shichinin no samurai 
Directed by Akira Kurosawa 
Japan 1954
Toho/BFI Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers.

“Find hungry samurai. Even bears leave the forest when they’re hungry.”
Seven Samurai

What can one say when talking about Seven Samurai? 

The film was made by my favourite director, Akira Kurosawa, around the same time that both Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, starring Toshiro Mifune (my second favourite all time actor) and Godzilla, starring Takashi Shimura (my all time favourite actor) were also being filmed. This film stars both these actors in the leading roles (I seem to remember they were friends and next door neighbours for a time, too). All three films were expected to sink Toho studios without trace so, with Kurosawa filming for an unexpected 148 days and with costs going four times over the projected budget, you can understand why production was shut down a number of times. Kurosawa’s alleged response was to just go off fishing, figuring that the studio had already spent so much money, they wouldn’t want to pull the plug. 

However, all three of those films have stood the test of time and ended up saving Toho Studios and securing its future as the number one Japanese studio of all time. Japanese critics at that time were somewhat soured on the film, claiming it to be too Westernised. Kurosawa, while freely admitting that he was somewhat influenced by the cinema of John Ford, made something that took in a lot of money in Japan, regardless of these criticisms. And of course, many films (including Westerns) have been remakes of Kurosawa films... in terms of Seven Samurai, my favourite two remakes would be The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond The Stars (reviewed by me here).

The story is well known and it consists of bandits threatening to raid and pillage a village, once the barley has ripened and been harvested... with a small bunch of the poor farmers journeying to a town to try and hire a number of samurai to protect them when this occurs, although all they can offer is three meals a day. Seven are acquired and, by the end of the three and a half hour picture, only three are left standing... and one of them stays to join the farming community, pursuing a local girl.

The film starts off brilliantly and, after about a quarter of an hour of the farmers being taunted and jeered at in town (and after, I think, we get a very brief glimpse of future Kurosawa regular and acting giant  Tatsuya Nakadai playing... and I quote the IMDB... ‘samurai wandering through town’), we finally meet three of the main characters. The lead, played by Takashi Shimura, has been hired to kill a thief holding a local baby hostage, holed up in a barn. In a scene which must have ben absolutely electrifying to Japanese audiences at the time (let alone the characters of the town people watching him do it) he slices off his top knott (something unheard of for a samurai, even a ronin such as that which Shimura plays) and shaves his head to look like a priest. Then, with a clever ruse utilising two balls of rice, he makes short work of the thief who we see only in aftermath, in slow motion, as he rushes out of the barn and then falls to the floor. 

Now I can’t write a whole book about this movie for one blog entry (although some people have... you should maybe read one) but even this scene gives a look at the genius of Kurosawa (apart from the dynamic use of slow motion and editing which is used more than once in the movie). And I'm talking about the way he puts people who will become important a little later in the film into the audience’s mind by stealth. For instance, the character of ‘the kid’,  Isao Kimura, walks in behind a group of six watchers in the 4:3 frame behind them (making a group of seven, not the last time this number of characters in a frame crop up in the film) and when they all leave to follow the action, he stays in frame for a few seconds, which embeds him into the audience consciousness when, a few minutes later, he turns out to be one of the leads. 

And not only that... the next shot where he walks behind a bunch of onlookers watching the show from behind, with the camera now looking at the scene from behind him, Toshiro Mifune’s character is sitting on the floor in the shot too. It’s all good stuff and is just another sign that Kurosawa was an absolute master of his art. As is his use of verticals to compartmentalise a frame a while later, in a believable way while still conforming to the small, almost square frame of the aspect ratio. It’s great stuff.

And the drama between all the characters is absolutely amazing... even though my two favourite characters in the film played by two other Kurosawa regulars... Minoru Chiaki and  Seiji Miyaguchi... are both dead by the end of the story. There are also some of the greatest action sequences in movie history, with frenetic editing, fury and sound, especially the final battle where everyone is slipping around and drenched in rain and mud. It’s a film which truly sticks in the mind, not least because of  Fumio Hayasaka’s phenomenal score (I even like the song version of the main samurai theme, not used in the movie but which is in one of the discs in the first of the Kurosawa soundtrack box sets put out in Japan some decades ago) which livens things up when it needs to and which also, in one particular theme, seems almost the inspiration for Elmer Bernstein’s bandit theme from the remake known as The Magnificent Seven.

Another thing I like about the movie, a concept sadly lost nowadays, mostly, is that there is respect for the older people in the village. When the villagers are stuck and don’t know what to do, they go and see the village elder and listen and take note of his wisdom... a nice thing to see. 

Decades ago, a friend and I went to see a day long bunch of seminars about Kurosawa at the National Film Theatre, followed by one of the movies (I think it may have been The Hidden Fortress). Among the guests were Kurosawa’s friend and biographer, the late, great Donald Richie and, also, the great director Alex Cox. Cox had a bunch of postcards representing all of Kurosawa’s films and he asked the audience to vote on whether each film was a ‘masterpiece’ or not, implying that this is a good way to tell the worth of a film director. In the case of this experiment, there were well over half of the director’s films which were argued by various members of the public as being masterpieces... which really says something about how well appreciated this director is. And, of course, nobody hesitated in proclaiming Seven Samurai a masterpiece. If you’ve not seen this one, maybe sort out that oversight sometime. One of the most entertaining films in the history of cinema, for sure.

Belladonna Of Sadness

At The Mountains of Sadness

Belladonna Of Sadness
Japan 1973 Directed by Eiichi Yamamoto
Cinelicious Pics Blu Ray Zone A 

Belladonna of Sadness is a movie which had a general release in a few countries in the early 1970s and which is credited with contributing heavily, on its failure at the box office, to the demise of the studio that produced it. It wasn’t released in the US or, I believe, in the UK, until last year and I, myself, probably wouldn’t have heard of it if I hadn’t stumbled into a promo for the US Blu Ray release on Twitter a few months before it came out.

The film is an animated (kinda) feature length movie and is said to be the last in Yamamoto’s  Animerama trilogy although, since it stands alone without the other works, I suspect this is an ‘unofficial’ trilogy named such by over enthusiastic audiences... such as Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly being named a trilogy when they actually aren’t or Dario Argento’s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies On Grey Velvet being named his ‘animal’ trilogy, just because they have names of creatures in the titles.

Now I say it’s an animated feature but animated is a loose term when it comes to this movie which, for the most part, deals in static images which are then creatively panned over or zoomed in or out of for artistic effect with the odd moving part thrown in such as a creature’s eyes lighting up or a drawbridge on a castle pulling shut. That being said, there are some brief examples of proper animation thrown into various parts of the movie, such as the initial rape of the films main protagonist Jeanne, on the day she gets married to another character called Jean (both tragic figures) in which we see the path of her misfortunes as the leader of her village and his castle full of people take turns to defile her body and we see her loins and spine filling up with blood which tears through her.

The film is full of tragedy as various misfortunes are visited on Jeanne and Jean, with Jeanne most notably affected by the harsh knocks that life delivers her as she sleeps with the devil (voiced by legendary actor Tatsuya Nakadai) in various incarnations until, at some point over the years, she gives him her soul so she can become a vengeful and satanic witch to lead a revolt in her village.

There seems to be an abundance of sexuality and violence in the imagery throughout the entire length of the running time and, although this includes such clichés such as a vaginal flower opening up its petals, there are some interesting ideas showcased in an expressive manner here. Probably the most animated sequences in the movie are the montage sequences which crop up every now and again to move the narrative forward or make a point and there is definitely a feel that the director, although known for his animated work a long time prior to this, was perhaps a little inspired by The Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. Although the animation and drawing style look very different to that for the most part, there’s one particular montage sequence, where Jeanne finally gives her soul to Satan, that seems almost ripped out of Yellow Submarine in terms of the stylistic chaos which manifested in a somewhat more joyful manner in that particular work.

For the most part, the images and the way they are drawn are what makes this mostly watchable and it carries a very broad range in terms of the different kinds of imagery pitched against each other in the editing room. Some of it seems like boldly simplified caricature in nature while a lot of the erotic content seems almost like it is trying to be something Guido Crepax might have drawn for one of his Valentina strips. It’s almost like a fairy tale for adults in that the content of this particular movie is definitely not for kids but the visual language in which it is expressed is done so in the guise of childhood imagery. This imagery is ably supported by the score which, apart from the songs, is written by Masahiko Satô and it kind of alternates between a rather interesting, rocky and acidic version of something Vince Guaraldi might have supplied for a Charlie Brown cartoon and something which is, sometimes, a bit more wallpapery and easier to ignore.

In terms of story, the title of the tale is apt because it really is a portrait of tragedy and this is sometimes backed up with lyrics from some of the songs in the score. The lyrics help pour on the misery and help carry the message which seems to be a highly feminist one... which is strange because, truth be told, the film seems to be oddly misogynistic in where it chooses to focus its attention. That being said, there are some great lines and one, where the women and children are left behind in the village to look after it while the men-folk go off to war for a few years, is a really telling one in terms of its overall message... “Women are always the ones left behind to suffer.” However, despite this noble subtext, the final image of a strange point made about the French Revolution, which seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the rest of the film (and which was, tellingly, not in the original release and added many years later for re-release in certain countries) seems to be an almost complete non-sequitur and leaves you hanging, in terms of being a fitting climax to the movie.

All in all, Belladonna of Sadness is innovative in places with some nice, expressive art and, at the very least, a consistency to the story in terms of the downward spiral of events it depicts (even with that strange ending). I have to say I found myself wandering a lot (or actually almost nodding off) as the film played out and it would be true to say it wasn’t successful in completely capturing my attention. I’m glad I saw it but I can’t, in all honesty, say I’d recommend it to a third party but, that being said, if you are into seeing beautiful artwork represented on screen then this definitely is a film which has it in abundance. Not particularly something I would watch again in a hurry but also not without interest. It has its moments.