Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa’s stirring epic is one of the international cinema’s undisputed masterworks, and has been acclaimed as “one of the great art works of the twentieth century” (Stanley Kauffman). In 16th-century Japan, seven unemployed swordsman are hired to defend a village against forty marauding bandits. Seven Samurai was over a year in the making (the original production schedule called for three months), and became the most expensive movie ever made in Japan, nearly bankrupting Toho Studios. The film’s debt to the Hollywood Western, and to the films of John Ford in particular, has been openly acknowledged by Kurosawa; Seven Samurai has, in its turn, influenced a wide range of non-Japanese cinema, from the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone to the Star Wars cycle of George Lucas, and was remade in the U.S. as The Magnificent Seven. Kurosawa pioneered the use of multiple cameras and the telephoto lens for the kinetic, tour-de-force battle in the rain that concludes Seven Samurai; the film’s action sequences rank with the finest achievements of Eisenstein or Griffith, and the entire work has been described as a brilliant tapestry of motion. “It is not only Kurosawa’s most vital picture, it is perhaps the best Japanese film ever made” (Donald Richie). “A work of relentless, unmitigated action, as epic as any film ever made . . . An unquestionable triumph of art” (John Simon). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 208 mins.

Please note: Double-bill prices in effect for this film.