Article: Gritty 'Samurai' voice at 50

Gritty 'Samurai' voice at 50


By Gary Arnold
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The most persuasive argument for film preservation in my lifetime has
been the continuing enhancement of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai,"
which has returned through next weekend in a 50th-anniversary
engagement at the American Film Institute's National Theater at the
Kennedy Center.
The last booking of this majestic historical-martial-social epic,
the most intimate and stirring of all cinematic adventure spectacles,
revealed an unexpected bonus: freshly colloquial and eye-opening
translation of the Japanese dialogue, sometimes commensurate with an
R rating.

Given the context of the story — a vividly gritty celebration of
self-defense set in the 16th century, when impoverished farmers
succeed in recruiting a band of samurai mercenaries to protect their
next harvest from marauding bandits — the previously obscured verbal
bluntness and pungency were not out of line.

However, parents may want to take it into consideration when
introducing older children to this superlative movie. They'll be
reading a more outspoken movie while seeing an eyeful of heroic
conflict and sacrifice.

I first saw "Seven Samurai" in its original 160-minute import
version when I was in high school. By this time, more than four years
after its Japanese premiere, the movie already was a revival
attraction, one of several foreign-language landmarks that came to my
attention while frequenting the long-gone Berkeley, Calif.,
storefront theaters the Cinema Guild & Studio, managed at that time
by Pauline Kael.

Both the auditoriums and the screen sizes were cramped, to put it
kindly, so quite a few years went by before I saw a suitably
magnified "Samurai."

Columbia, the U.S. importer, also had renamed it "The Magnificent
Seven," the title of 1960's durably appealing John Sturges-directed
Western homage to Mr. Kurosawa's prototype, which co-starred Yul
Brynner and Steve McQueen.

Film historian Donald Richie prepared the groundwork for an
eventual restoration of the complete "Seven Samurai" in his 1965
critical study, "The Films of Akira Kurosawa." His appreciation was
shadowed by a provocative caveat: "Nevertheless, 'Seven Samurai' has,
outside Japan in 1954, never really been seen. This is one of the
major cinematic tragedies."

Americans weren't the only ones who had been shortchanged. A
later historian, Stuart Galbraith IV, chronicled the careers of Mr.
Kurosawa and his pre-eminent leading man, Toshiro Mifune, in a volume
titled "The Emperor and the Wolf." Mr. Galbraith wrote: "Because of
its extreme length, the complete 'Seven Samurai' ... was limited to
its first few weeks [of release], and only in Japan's biggest cities.
In rural areas and in subsequent runs it was cut to a more
manageable, if compromised length."

Evidently, the shortened Japanese versions corresponded to the
160-minute export edition, which betrayed little slack and dazzled
its first generation of U.S. admirers. A complete reissue began
creeping up on the public eager to discover it. There were
scattered "special event" bookings toward the end of the 1960s and a
PBS telecast in 1972. However, another decade passed before the
Japanese distributor, Toho, mounted a full-blown theatrical revival
of the whole show, which reached Washington in spring 1983 and
clinched the case for greatness.

The cuts had shaved certain episodes to the bone. The
restorations disclosed how methodical, straightforward and detailed
the complete scenario had been. All the subplots, the private little
dramas played out against the larger crisis of defending and saving
the village, were systematic and absorbing rather than fleeting.

The cumulative effect added thematic weight and dignity to what
always had seemed a nobly envisioned and realized movie.

Incredibly, "Seven Samurai" is still demonstrating room for
improvement in the first decade of a new century. The video editions
of the movie have yet to reflect the recent changes to the subtitles,
so for the time being, the most complete "Samurai" is an exclusive at
repertory theaters.

Who says things are always going from bad to worse? In this case,
a great movie keeps getting better than you realized.


TITLE: "Seven Samurai" ("Shichinin no Samurai")

RATING: No MPAA rating (Made in 1954, decades before the advent
of a rating system; adult subject matter, with occasional violent
episodes, including extended battle scenes; occasional profanity,
comic vulgarity and fleeting sexual allusions)

CREDITS: Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Screenplay by Mr. Kurosawa,
Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Cinematography by Asakazu Nakai.
Art direction by Shu Matsuyama. Swordplay instructor: Yoshio Sugino.
Archery Instructors: Ienori Kaneko and Shigeru Endo (horseback).
Sound by Fumio Yanoguchi. Music by Fumio Hayasaka. In Japanese with
English subtitles. Original Japanese release: April 1954. First
American release: November 1956

RUNNING TIME: 200 minutes

EVENT: Revival of "Seven Samurai"
WHERE: American Film Institute National Theater at Kennedy Center
WHEN: Today through Aug. 29
ADMISSION: $8.50 for the general public; $7.50 for AFI members,
students and seniors (65 and older)
PHONE: 202/785-4600