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Seven Samurai

For other uses, see Seven Samurai (disambiguation).

Seven Samurai
Theatrical release poster
Japanese name
Kanji七人の侍
Transcriptions
Revised HepburnShichinin no Samurai
Directed byAkira Kurosawa
Written by
Produced bySōjirō Motoki
Starring
CinematographyAsakazu Nakai
Edited byAkira Kurosawa
Music byFumio Hayasaka
Production
company
Distributed byToho
Release date
  • April 26, 1954 (1954-04-26)
Running time
207 minutes (with intermission)
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Budget¥210 million
Box office¥290 million
Japan rentals: ¥268.2 million[1][2]
USA: $113,600

Seven Samurai (Japanese: 七人の侍, Hepburn: Shichinin no Samurai) is a 1954 Japanese epic jidaigeki film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Taking place in 1586[3] in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, it follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who seek to hire samurai to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

At the time, the film was the most expensive film made in Japan. It took a year to shoot and faced many difficulties. It was the second-highest-grossing domestic film in Japan in 1954. Many reviews compared the film to the Western film genre.[4]

Seven Samurai is regarded as Kurosawa's magnum opus and as one of the greatest and most influential films in cinema history. Since its release, it has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of greatest films, such as the BFI's Sight & Sound and Rotten Tomatoes polls.[5][6][7] It was also voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in the BBC's 2018 international critics' poll.[8] It is regarded as one of the most "remade, reworked, and referenced" films in cinema.[9]

Plot

[edit]

In 1586, a bandit gang discusses raiding a mountain village, but their chief decides to wait until after the harvest for a better haul. One villager overhears this and tells the others. They turn to Gisaku, the village elder and miller. Because the local magistrate is useless, Gisaku advises them to hire samurai to protect the village. Since they have no money and can only offer food as payment, Gisaku advises the villagers to find hungry samurai.

Traveling to a nearby town, the villagers find Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, whom they see rescuing a young boy from a thief. A young samurai named Katsushirō asks to become Kambei's disciple. The villagers ask for Kambei's help, and he reluctantly agrees, saying that defense will be tougher than offense. He then recruits his old comrade-in-arms Shichirōji, along with Gorobei, Heihachi, and Kyūzō, a taciturn master swordsman whom Katsushirō regards with awe. Kikuchiyo, a wild and eccentric samurai-poser, is eventually accepted as well after attempts to drive him away fail.

Arriving at the village, the samurai and farmers slowly begin to trust each other. Katsushirō meets Shino, a farmer's daughter disguised as a boy by her father, and begins a relationship with her despite knowing that the difference in their social classes prohibits it. Later, the samurai are angered when Kikuchiyo brings them armor and weapons, which the villagers acquired by killing other samurai injured or fleeing from battle. Kikuchiyo angrily retorts that samurai are responsible for much of the suffering farmers endure, revealing he is an orphaned farmer's son. The samurais' anger turns to shame.

Kambei arms the villagers with bamboo spears, organizes them into squads, and trains them. Three bandit scouts are spotted; two are killed, while the last reveals their camp's location before the villagers execute him. The samurai burn down the camp in a pre-emptive strike. Rikichi, a troubled villager aiding the samurai, breaks down when he sees his wife, who was kidnapped and made a concubine during a previous raid. Upon seeing Rikichi, she runs back into the burning barracks to her death. Heihachi is killed by a gunshot while trying to stop Rikichi from pursuing her. At Heihachi's funeral, the saddened villagers are inspired by Kikuchiyo, who raises a banner Heihachi made to represent the six samurai, Kikuchiyo, and the village.

When the bandits finally arrive, they are confounded by the new fortifications, which include a moat and high wooden fences. They burn the village's outlying houses, including Gisaku's mill. Gisaku's family tries to save him when he refuses to abandon it, but all perish except a baby rescued by Kikuchiyo. The bandits then besiege the village, but many are killed as the defenders thwart every attack.

The bandits possess three matchlock muskets. Kyūzō ventures out alone and captures one; an envious Kikuchiyo abandons his squad to bring back another. However, Kikuchiyo's absence allows a handful of bandits to infiltrate his post and kill several farmers, and Gorobei is slain defending his position. That night, Kambei predicts that the bandits will make one final assault due to their dwindling numbers.

Meanwhile, Katsushirō and Shino's relationship is discovered by her father, who is enraged that her virginity has been taken and beats her. Kambei and the villagers intervene; Shichirōji attempts to assuage the father, reasoning that such behavior is normal before battle and that the couple should be forgiven.

The next morning, the defenders allow the remaining bandits to enter the village and ambush them. As the battle nears its end, the bandit chief hides in the women's hut and shoots and kills Kyūzō with his musket. An enraged Kikuchiyo charges in and is shot as well, but kills the chief before dying. The remaining outlaws are slain.

Afterward, Kambei, Katsushirō and Shichirōji stand in front of the funeral mounds of their comrades, watching the joyful villagers sing while planting their crops. Katsushirō and Shino meet one last time, but Shino walks past him to join in the planting while Katsushirō despondently watches her. Kambei declares to Shichirōji that it is another pyrrhic victory for the samurai: "The victory belongs to those peasants. Not to us."

Cast

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The seven samurai

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  • Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada (島田勘兵衛, Shimada Kanbei), a war-weary but honorable and strategic rōnin, and the leader of the seven
  • Yoshio Inaba as Gorōbei Katayama (片山五郎兵衛, Katayama Gorōbei), a skilled archer, who acts as Kambei's second-in-command and helps create the master-plan for the village's defense
  • Daisuke Katō as Shichirōji (七郎次), Kambei's old friend and former lieutenant
  • Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyūzō (久蔵), a serious, stone-faced and supremely skilled swordsman
  • Minoru Chiaki as Heihachi Hayashida (林田平八, Hayashida Heihachi), an amiable though less-skilled fighter, whose charm and wit maintain his comrades' morale in the face of adversity
  • Isao Kimura as Katsushirō Okamoto (岡本勝四郎, Okamoto Katsushirō), the untested son of a wealthy, land-owning samurai, whom Kambei reluctantly takes in as a disciple[10]
  • Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo (菊千代), a humorous, mercurial and temperamental rogue who lies about being a samurai, but eventually proves his worth, bravery and resourcefulness

Villagers

[edit]

Others

[edit]

Production

[edit]

Development and pre-production

[edit]
Screenwriters Akira Kurosawa in 1953, Shinobu Hashimoto in 1959, and Hideo Oguni in 1949

During the occupation of Japan, authorities had deliberately suppressed the production of samurai films as they were seen to embody the anti-democratic, feudal values of Japan's wartime government.[12] When the occupation forces left in the early 1950s, the Japanese public still held an interest in stories about the samurai.[13] After the completion of Ikiru (1952), director Akira Kurosawa and his collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto planned to write a script following the daily routine of a single samurai, who at the end of the film would have to commit seppuku for a mistake made during the day.[14] The project stalled as no records could be found concerning the samurai's everyday activities (for example, what and where he might eat).[13][a] Kurosawa next proposed a project adapting the Hongō Bugei Shōden [ja], a collection of stories based on the biography of the Edo period martial artist Hinatsu Shigetaka. Hashimoto wrote a draft script, but Kurosawa abandoned the idea.[16] Continuing to research the period, Kurosawa found an article that detailed the story of a group of samurai who were hired by farmers to protect them from bandits.[13] In November 1952, Hashimoto wrote an informal script that came to 500 pages in length.[17] The individual characters were based on real martial arts masters.[13]

In December, Kurosawa, Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni went to a ryokan inn in Atami to write a full screenplay. Kurosawa made detailed notes on the characteristics of each individual samurai, including on the way they would talk and how they tied their shoes.[18] Additionally, he created family trees for the residents of the village and instructed the actors to live together as if they were real families during the shoot.[19] Kurosawa described his and Hashimoto's role as "technical" screenwriters, while Oguni was the humanist "soul".[20] The three screenwriters had developed six samurai, but decided to include the character of Kikuchiyo as they considered the other characters too serious to be entertaining. The script was written over a period of more than six weeks. They wrote the same scene by themselves and would then present their work to the others, whereupon the best ideas would be compiled. Oguni was the screenwriter who had the ultimate decision over a script's readiness; this led to complete rejections that required everybody to re-write their version of a scene.[18] During the writing process Kurosawa suffered from back pain from prolonged sitting on the tatami mats, and became sick with roundworms.[21]

After the script was finished, the film spent three months in preproduction, much of the time used for location scouting. It was decided that the village would be filmed using five separate locations, with the main village scene being a studio set that required twenty three houses to be built.[22] Kurosawa hired Yoshio Inaba (a stage actor) because he wanted someone who could play someone both humble and mature. Inaba's relative inexperience on film productions, however, saw Kurosawa single him out for abuse.[23] Seiji Miyaguchi was also primarily a stage actor, he had worked with Kurosawa as a character actor since the director's first film, Sanshiro Sugata (1943), and was cast as Kyuzo—the part that had originally been intended for Mifune before Kikuchiyo was written.[24] Keiko Tsushima was cast as the female love interest for the character Katsushiro without a formal interview. It was her first film working as a freelance actress.[25] Many of the other actors were either people Kurosawa had worked with before, or non-actors.[26] Prior to shooting, there were four weeks of rehearsals, during which cast members were required to maintain character and dress in costume.[22]

Filming

[edit]
The filmmakers direct the actors for a sword fight in a field.
Akira Kurosawa directing Seiji Miyaguchi (far right side)

Filming began on May 27, 1953 with the scene of an argument between the characters Rikichi and Manzo just before they witness the samurai Kambei rescue a child from a criminal.[22] The film's cinematographer was Asakazu Nakai, with Takao Saitō as assistant cinematographer.[27] Many of the shooting locations were on or close to sets at Toho Studios (including many of the film's indoor scenes, and the village center which was on the edge of a set in Setagaya Ward), but no single location could be used to cover the whole area, so additional filming took place in Shizuoka Prefecture and Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture.[28] Production fell behind schedule due to the changes in location shooting, bad weather, and Kurosawa's own perfectionism.[29] Forty horses were brought in for the film, but transporting them to the five different village locations proved impossible logistically, so it was decided to use local horses that were painted to look the same.[22] Mifune stayed in character throughout the production. In advance of the scene where he cries holding a baby whose mother has just been killed, the actor drank a large quantity of sake in order to outwardly display raw emotion.[30] The martial artist Yoshio Sugino was hired as a swordplay instructor for the film.[31] Seiji Miyaguchi later credited his experience working for Kurosawa for molding him into an actor, reflecting that at the time Kurosawa cast him as the expert swordsman, he had never used or carried a sword.[32]

In mid-July 1953, Kurosawa had to go to hospital to recover from the exhaustion of producing the film.[33] Galbraith speculates that it was during his recovery in this period that Kurosawa permitted Mifune to perform in Ishirō Honda's Eagle of the Pacific (1953).[34] Kurosawa returned to the set on August 1. Toho had originally given the film a production budget of around $150,000–$200,000,[b] and slated production to finish on August 18 in order to open in October. However, at this point less than a third of Kurosawa's script had been shot and there was only $19,000 left.[29][c] Yoshio Tsuchiya, who played the villager Rikichi, was an acting student at the time he was hired for the film. Misunderstanding the length of time shooting would take, he requested a ten day holiday after three months on set. Kurosawa denied his request but, fearing Tsuchiya's intention to leave, Kurosawa invited the actor to instead live with his family, which he did for two years.[36] Faced with professional difficulties, Kurosawa feared that he may be replaced by a director Kunio Watanabe, who was able to make films quickly and within small budgets.[37]

By September 1953, the production was suspended as there was no more money to finance it. The studio backed Kurosawa's direction and filming resumed on October 3.[38] The total budget for the film came to ¥210 million,[39][d] or between $556,000,[41][e] and $580,000.[42][f] This made it the most expensive Japanese feature film made at the time.[39][43] When production started again, Kurosawa became furious at a group of studio executives who decided to invite members of the media to view the filming of a battle scene; the following day Tsuchiya received nasty burns during a stunt that required him to be in close proximity to a burning barn.[44] During filming for the scene where the samurai arrive at the village, Kurosawa set up a shot at the top of the mountain from which the village could be seen in the valley. In order for this to work as an evening shot, the crew spent the entire day setting up for the single shot, but camerman Asakazu Nakai and Kurosawa ended up debating when to start shooting the scene by looking at the light through the camera's viewfinder. Despite spending the entire day preparing, Nakai's hesitation to start shooting caused the sun to set and the scene was not shot.[45] Every evening Kurosawa would dine and drink with the cast and crew of the films at the ryokan inn they were staying in and review the day's work.[46]

As filming continued into 1954, Toho began to pressure Kurosawa to finish filming. The last scene he chose to shoot—at this time in mid-winter—was the final battle in the village, believing that had he filmed this before the rest of the script, the studio would have forced him to stop production. Kurosawa, Kikushima, and Oguni continued to revise the details of the battle until it was supposed to be filmed and kept the contents of it secret from the rest of the cast and crew.[46] Kurosawa used a multi-camera setup in order to fully capture the momentum of large numbers of people in battle.[47] The scene used telephoto lenses to adjust the audience's perception of the battle.[48] He did this by placing three cameras at differing angles and perspectives before editing the footage together.[47] The scene took about two months to film, during which it snowed and the cast and crew risked frostbite in the cold temperature and artificial rain. After production finished Mifune had to be admitted to hospital to recover.[49] In total, Seven Samurai took 148 working days to shoot,[50] and used 130,000 feet of film.[47]

Music

[edit]

While Kurosawa was preparing to make the film, he repeatedly listened to Antonin Leopold Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor.[51] As production on the film was finishing, Kurosawa met with the film's composer, Fumio Hayasaka, to consult with him about the score. At this time Hayasaka was suffering from tuberculosis and often discussed his compositions with the arranger, Masaru Satō, while using an oxygen tank. The composer focused on the score for Seven Samurai, turning down other offers of work, and over the course of about two months he wrote 300 orchestral sketches.[49] The music was recorded in the spring of 1954 over the course of two weeks.[39] The film used magnetic tape recording which was a departure from Kurosawa's films which had traditionally used optical recording—a one-take method that converted audio signals into light. The new technology allowed for the audio track to be re-recorded if any mistakes were made.[52] Kurosawa and Hayasaka decided not to use music in the film's final battle sequence in order to heighten the scene's sense of realism.[53] The folk song used in the film's final scene is also an original composition of Hayasaka's. He wrote it after researching 300 contemporary words and phrases of the Sengoku Period.[54]

Fumio Hayasaka – "Samurai Theme"
Hayasaka scored the "Samurai Theme" in multiple variations as a leitmotif associated with Kambei individually and the samurai as a whole.[55]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Kobayashi identifies the film's five key pieces of music as the "Samurai Theme", "Kikuchiyo's Mambo", "Shino's Theme", "Farmer's Theme", and "Ronin's Theme".[56] The main "Samurai Theme" was originally rejected by Hayasaka, but he rediscovered it after the director turned down all of the composer's prior suggestions.[49] Lyrics were also written for the theme. Sung by Yoshiko Yamaguchi, they were only used in a later image song released in November 1954.[57] The composer recorded five trumpets for the "Samurai Theme" to play after the funeral of Heihachi. The music was recorded outside, but Hayasaka was not satisfied with the sound, so they continued through the night until dawn the following day.[58] In recognition of his work on the film, Hayasaka's name appears alone in the film's credits, which was highly unusual in the Japanese film industry for the time.[49]

Themes

[edit]
Main article: Themes in Seven Samurai
The nobori is a symbol of the new relations between the samurai and the farmers.[59][60]

Seven Samurai is a genre epic that contains themes of class and altered identity.[61] The film's drama focuses on the core group of seven samurai and their heroism, which is dramatized and tragic.[61] To film historian Donald Richie, the film is about both the individual and the social group.[62] He analyzes the samurai as individual characters and frames their actions through an understanding of heroism that is stoic and generous to others, even to the samurai's own detriment.[63] Through the film's presentation of the samurai and their deaths, the ending has been read variously as hopeful,[43] ironic,[64] and as a metaphor for the obsolescence of the samurai class.[65][66] The film critic Stuart Galbraith IV views the ending as the samurai becoming disillusioned with the peasants and the peasants already forgetting the sacrifice of the samurai.[67] For Professor of English Joan Mellen, the scene is instead an elegy for the moral decline of contemporary Japanese society.[68]

The scholar Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto contextualizes Seven Samurai within the historical context of the jidaigeki genre.[69] To him, Kurosawa's individualization of different characters and their balance within and between different social groups is a unique iteration on established conventions among studio films for the time.[70] The integration of different people with social groups is established by framing characters together with their social groups in the shot.[71] The film theorist Stephen Prince describes Kurosawa's use of montage and multi-camera setup as a formalistic approach that causes a "fragmentation of his images".[72] Prince discusses how Kurosawa would use camera placement and editing to re-order characters within the cinematic space. The differing angles represent changes to the social relations between the film's characters.[73]

Scholars have utilized a dialectical approach to the film.[74][75][76] Professor of cinema David Desser notes that Kurosawa's work is informed by a dialectic between formalism and humanism.[77] He sees Seven Samurai's dialectic playing out in the film's structure and editing, as well as within narrative elements of the film's text.[78] Dialectics have also been used as a means to discuss the film's approach to class struggle and mobility between classes.[76][79] A symbolic link showing the changed relationship between the social groups of samurai and farmers is found in the nobori, which depicts both the samurai as individual shapes, and the farmers as a collective.[59][60] The samurai are adherents to the warrior code of bushidō,[80][81] with their deaths by firearms being a moral critique of Western influence.[82][83] According to Desser, their defence of the farmers is made more heroic and more human as a result of this.[84] The character of Kikuchiyo has been identified as embodying a confused or unified vision of class.[85][86] The character's speech about the suffering of the farmers implicates everyone in social and moral failures among the classes.[87][88]

Analyses of the film's depiction of environment have looked at the relationship between the characters and the village.[89][90] The use of rain in the film is considered an emotional cue.[90][91] The philosopher Gilles Deleuze considers rain in Seven Samurai to symbolize the layout of space and environment in the film that makes certain character actions possible. Deleuze refers to Kurosawa as "one of the greatest film-makers of rain."[92] Film critic Kenneth Turan considers the film's runtime to embody the agricultural year itself.[50] Scholar of anthropology Dolores Martinez sees the natural world to be inextricably tied to the role of women in the film.[93] The relationship between samurai and bandit with the farmers is seen in the relationship between Katsushiro and the village girl Shino, as well as the villager Rikichi and his kidnapped wife. Both relationships are seen as dishonorable, but the latter represents a "self-betrayal" of family and home that the film's women urge them to resist.[94]

Richie sees the use of music as a means by which the different social groups are divided, since the motifs for the samurai, farmers, and bandits are heard together but are not played at the same time.[95] According to Kobayashi, a major theme of the film's music is the leitmotif, a technique using fixed tones, melodies, and rhythms to evoke an idea. In Seven Samurai the technique is used as the core of the film's music and is arranged around moments of characterization.[96] Kobayashi analyzes the film's main "Samurai Theme" as an embodiment of the romanticism and heroism of the samurai. To him, the film's different arrangements of the "Samurai Theme" act as the center of the film's musical direction.[97] He also analyzes "Kikuchiyo's Mambo" as a form of music uncommon to a period piece that juxtaposes the characters of Kikuchiyo and Kambei.[98]

Release

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Theatrical

[edit]

Before the film was released the press had already attacked it.[43] Toho cut a trailer together that likened the film to Gone With the Wind (1939) in its epic scale. To appeal to a female audience, Keiko Tsushima and Yukiko Shimazaki were given third and fourth billing in advertisements.[39] Seven Samurai was released in Japan on April 26, 1954.[31][27] The film's runtime came to 207 minutes, which at the time was the longest Japanese film ever produced.[39] The full-length roadshow version was later cut to 160 minutes for general release.[99] The first full-length cut was only shown for a few weeks in major cities. When the second cut down version was shown in rural areas, some theaters booked the film in two parts so people could watch over several days. At the film's completion party on April 29, Kurosawa's wife Yōko Yaguchi went into labor, giving birth to Kazuko.[100] The film's second, theatrical, cut was re-issued in Japan in 1955 and 1967, with the original 207 minute cut re-released in 1975 and 1991.[101]

American poster showing the title 'The Magnificent Seven' with scenes from the film, including quotes from newspapers calling it one of the year's best films
American release poster for Seven Samurai, released under the title The Magnificent Seven.[102]

The film was recut a third time to enter the Venice film festival.[g] Despite its success at the festival, the film did not receive an offer for foreign distribution. Co-screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto later considered that the studio should have produced a version dubbed into English rather than the subtitled version. Toho held a screening at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in January 1955, but did not receive any offers for distribution until August 1955, when Columbia Pictures expressed interest.[103] Prior to a wider release, the picture premiered in America at the Linda Lea theater in July 1956 to meet the requirements for Academy Award consideration.[102] The film premiered in Australia at the 1956 Melbourne International Film Festival.[104]

Seven Samurai was released in the United States by Columbia with English subtitles in November 1956.[99] The film officially opened at the Guild Theatre in New York under the title The Magnificent Seven.[102] The feature started to be screened at the cinema on November 19,[105] with an initial runtime of 155 minutes, this was then edited down by about 15 minutes to accommodate more screenings.[106] The American came to 141 minutes long.[99] One source indicates that an English dubbed version was also available in the country. Toho sold the rights to remake the film to American producer Lou Morheim. Morheim offered the rights to Anthony Quinn and Yul Brynner who wanted to remake Samurai as a Western. When The Magnificent Seven was released in 1960, Kurosawa's film was subsequently known by its original title Seven Samurai.[107] The 160 minute Japanese theatrical cut was re-released in the United States during the 1960s by Toho International.[99] The uncut version of the film was allegedly shown briefly in Los Angeles in 1969.[101] A 200 minute cut was broadcast on PBS-TV in 1972. A December 1982 re-release ran at 203 minutes, with every subsequent re-release adhering to the original cut's length.[99]

Home media

[edit]

The film received a US laserdisc release.[19] A VHS version was released by Home Vision Cinema, and a DVD by The Criterion Collection.[108] Commenting on the DVD release in 2006, The Los Angeles Times reported that the film had been restored using digital corrections to a duplicate negative, and also had a new 4.0 sound mix. The DVD came with additional bonus features which included commentary tracks from various academics, an interview between Kurosawa and director Nagisa Ōshima, and a documentary about the making of the film titled It's Wonderful to Create.[109] The British Film Institute released the film as part of a box set of Kurosawa's samurai films in 2010.[110] Seven Samurai was the third best-selling film released by the BFI for the year 2015, and the highest-selling overall as of that point.[111] Criterion released a Blu-ray version of Seven Samurai in October 2010.[112]

4K restoration

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In 2016, Toho carried out a 4K restoration, along with Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952). As the whereabouts of Seven Samurai's original negative is unknown, the transfer was made using a master positive and duplicate negative elements.[113] The 4K restoration debuted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, before being released theatrically later that year in the United States and United Kingdom.[114][115] A limited theatrical re-release of the restored film took place in Japan in October 2025.[116] A 4K Blu-ray was released on home video in November 2024 by Criterion and the BFI.[117][118]

Reception

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Box office

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Seven Samurai was a popular success among Japanese audiences.[119][120] The film grossed ¥290 million in ticket sales in Japan.[39][h] Of the gross, the distributor rental income was ¥268 million.[2] Most of the total ticket sales were at Toho-owned cinemas, increasing their share of the profit. Samurai was the highest grossing film of that year, but it was not massively profitable due to its high budget.[39] When the original 207 minute cut was re-issued in Japan in 1975, the film grossed $160,000.[i] The re-release in 1991 accrued $2.2 million.[101][j]

In the film's initial 1956 run at the Guild Theatre in New York, the film grossed $68,000 in total.[k] Additional takings across the country between January and April 1957—with screenings beginning in St. Louis—brought the total to $113,600.[l] The film's original release in Australia grossed $193,316.[128] A re-issue of Samurai in 2002 saw it accrue $275,965.[m] The film's re-release in the same year as part of a multi-title 'Kurosawa & Mifune Festival' accrued $561,692 for all twelve films in total.[n] A 2021 re-release in the United Kingdom grossed $23,485 in total.[o] The 4K re-release for the film's 70th anniversary in 2024 saw the film gross $552,530 internationally.[129][p]

Critical response

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Contemporary opinion

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Critical response to Seven Samurai in Japan was mixed.[39][130][131][132] According to Stuart Galbraith, the film's popular appeal worked against its critical acceptance.[39] Richie notes that some critics gave thoughtful analyses, but he gives examples of contemporary opinions that questioned whether the film was anti-democratic for condemning the farmers.[130] Galbraith mentions a report in The New York Times from a reporter who saw the original cut of the film in Japan and criticized its length.[103] Variety magazine, in a review of the film's shortened version screened at the Venice Film Festival, also criticized the film's length, although it considered it the film's "lone drawback"; with the review praising the film's action and editing, and singling out Mifune for praise.[103][133]

Critical reception upon the film's release in the United States was positive, but Galbraith writes that it was "tainted with a kind of cultural condescension".[102] Some critics dismissively compared Kurosawa's film to American Westerns.[134] The Los Angeles Times wrote a positive review, as did Marjory Adams in The Boston Globe, although Adams speculated that, "with no attempt to belittle" Kurosawa's film, Samurai had adapted its shots from Western genre movies.[135][136] In The Saturday Review, Arthur Knight used the comparison of the Western to highlight deeper formalistic and psychological aspects that served to reinvigorate genre elements.[134] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times considered the film to be one of the five best foreign films of 1956.[137] He wrote in November of that year that Samurai was technically brilliant, but too long and repetitious in its imagery.[138] Five days later, he wrote a second review where he questioned the accuracy of the film's depiction of feudal Japan while conceding that Kurosawa had still succeeded in conveying a sense of period authenticity.[139]

Reviewing the film at the Venice in 1954, Gavin Lambert from Sight and Sound magazine referred to the film as, "an adventure story of the best kind" and praised Kurosawa's composition; however, he considered Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu (1954) to be more satisfying overall.[140] Following the 1956 American theatrical release, New York Daily News critic Wanda Hale favorably compared Seven Samurai to Kurosawa's earlier film Rashomon (1950). She praised Samurai's depictions of violence, humor, and romance; commenting on Kurosawa's "deep perception of human nature".[141] In a 1958 article in Cahiers du Cinéma about the qualities of filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, the director Jacques Rivette wrote that Seven Samurai was a "facile success", and considered Kurosawa's approach to be overrefined in its use of Western cinematic techniques.[142] Judith Crist referred to the 1964 American theatrical re-release of Seven Samurai's 160 minute cut as "a magnificent film".[143]

Retrospective opinion

[edit]

Retrospective analysis of the Seven Samurai has seen critics and scholars consider the film a masterpiece,[130][144][145] and among the greatest films ever made.[101][130][131] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a perfect approval rating of 100% based on 103 reviews.[146] On Metacritic, it received a 98 out of 100 based on seven critical reviews.[147] In Sight and Sound's 1982 critics' poll, Samurai was voted the third greatest film of all time.[148] In the 1992 poll, the film placed at ninth place;[149] the 2022 poll saw the film rank in twentieth place.[150] A 2018 international poll of 209 critics conducted by the BBC voted Seven Samurai the best foreign-language film.[151]

Film historian Peter Cowie quoted Kurosawa as saying, "Good westerns are liked by everyone. Since humans are weak, they want to see good people and great heroes. Westerns have been done over and over again, and in the process, a kind of grammar has evolved. I have learned from this grammar of the western." Cowie continues this thought by saying, "That Seven Samurai can be so seamlessly transposed to an American setting underlines how carefully Kurosawa had assimilated this grammar."[152]

In 1998, the film was ranked 5th in Time Out magazine's Top 100 Films (Centenary).[153] Entertainment Weekly voted it the 12th greatest film of all time in 1999.[154] In 2000, the film was ranked at No.23 in The Village Voice's 100 Greatest Films list.[155] In January 2002, the film was included on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.[156][157]

In 2007, the film was ranked at No. 3 by The Guardian's readers' poll on its list of "40 greatest foreign films of all time".[158] The film was voted at No. 57 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.[159] In 2009 the film was voted at No. 2 on the list of The Greatest Japanese Films of All Time by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo.[160] Seven Samurai was ranked number one on Empire magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[161]

Film critic Roger Ebert added it to his list of Great Movies in 2001.[162] Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker."[163] It was also listed by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky as one of his top ten favorite films.[164]

Kurosawa both directed and edited many of his films, including Seven Samurai. In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed Seven Samurai as the 33rd-best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its members.[165] In 2019, when Time Out polled film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors, Seven Samurai was voted the second-best action film of all time.[166] In 2021, the film was ranked at number 7 on Time Out magazine's list of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time".[167]

Accolades

[edit]
Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Academy Awards March 27, 1957 Best Art Direction (Black-and-White) Takashi Matsuyama Nominated [168]
Best Costume Design (Black-and-White) Kōhei Ezaki
British Academy Film Awards March 1, 1956 BAFTA Award for Best Film Seven Samurai [169]
BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor Toshirō Mifune
Takashi Shimura
Jussi Awards November 18, 1959 Directing Akira Kurosawa Honorary Mention[q] [170]
Acting Takashi Shimura
Kinema Junpo Best Ten 1954 Best Ten List Seven Samurai Third [39]
Mainichi Film Awards 1955 Best Supporting Actor Seiji Miyaguchi Won [171]
New York Film Critics Circle Awards January 19, 1957 Best Foreign Language Film Seven Samurai Nominated [172]
Venice Film Festival September 7, 1954 Silver Lion Akira Kurosawa Won[r] [103][173]

Legacy and cultural impact

[edit]

Seven Samurai was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for the industry. It has remained highly influential, often seen as one of the most "remade, reworked, referenced" films in cinema.[9]

There have been pachinko machines based on Seven Samurai in Japan. Seven Samurai pachinko machines have sold 94,000 units in Japan as of March 2018,[174] equivalent to an estimated $470 million in gross revenue.[174][175]

Remakes

[edit]
Further information: Remakes of films by Akira Kurosawa

Its influence can be most strongly felt in the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960), a film specifically adapted from Seven Samurai. Director John Sturges took Seven Samurai and adapted it to the Old West, with the samurai replaced by gunslingers. Many of The Magnificent Seven's scenes mirror those of Seven Samurai.[176] The film's title itself comes from the US localized title of Seven Samurai, which was initially released under the title The Magnificent Seven in the United States in 1955.[177] However, in an interview with R. B. Gadi, Kurosawa expressed how "the American copy of The Magnificent Seven is a disappointment, although entertaining. It is not a version of Seven Samurai".[178] Stephen Prince argues that considering samurai films and Westerns respond to different cultures and contexts, what Kurosawa found useful was not their content but rather he was inspired by their levels of syntactic movement, framing, form and grammar.[179]

The Invincible Six (1970), an American action film directed by Jean Negulesco, has been described as "a knockoff of the Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven genre set in 1960s Iran."[180]

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) is an American science fiction film directed by Jimmy T. Murakami and produced by Roger Corman. The film, intended as a "Magnificent Seven in outer space",[181] is based on the plots of The Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai. The movie acknowledges its debt to Seven Samurai by calling the protagonist's homeworld Akir and its inhabitants the Akira.[182]

Some film critics have noted similarities between Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998) and Seven Samurai.[183][184]

Several elements from Seven Samurai are also argued to have been adapted for Star Wars (1977).[185] Plot elements of Seven Samurai are also used in the Star Wars Anthology film Rogue One (2016).[151] The Clone Wars episode "Bounty Hunters" (2008) pays direct homage to Akira Kurosawa by adapting the film's plot, as does The Mandalorian episode "Chapter 4: Sanctuary" (2019).[186]

Director Zack Snyder credited Seven Samurai as being an inspiration for his 2023 space opera film Rebel Moon, which shares the plot element of villagers assembling a team of warriors to defend their farming settlement.[187] Snyder has described the movie as "Seven Samurai in space."[188]

Director Denis Villeneuve cited Seven Samurai as one of his favorite films of all time and as an influence on his 2015 film Sicario.[189]

Cultural impact

[edit]

Seven Samurai is largely touted as what made the "assembling the team" trope popular in movies and other media. This has since become a common trope in many action movies and heist films.[151] Seven Samurai spawned its own subgenre of "men-on-a-mission" films,[190] also known as the "Seven Samurai formula" where "a team of disparate characters are grouped to undertake a specific mission." The formula has been widely adopted by many films and other media.[4][186] Along with remakes already listed above, other examples of the "Seven Samurai formula" can be seen in films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998),[186] The Dirty Dozen (1967), Star Wars (1977),[4] The Savage Seven (1968),[191] The 13th Warrior (1999), The Expendables (2010), and The Avengers (2012),[192] as well as television series such as The A-Team and The Walking Dead.[186]

According to Stephen Prince, the film's "racing, powerful narrative engine, breathtaking pacing, and sense-assaulting visual style" (what he calls a "kinesthetic cinema" approach to "action filmmaking and exciting visual design") was "the clearest precursor" and became "the model for" the Hollywood blockbuster "brand of moviemaking" that emerged in the 1970s.[193] The visuals, plot, dialogue and film techniques of Seven Samurai inspired a wide range of filmmakers, ranging from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.[193][194] According to Prince, Kurosawa was "a mentor figure" to an emerging generation of American filmmakers, such as Spielberg and Lucas, who went on to develop the Hollywood blockbuster format in the 1970s.[193]

Elements from Seven Samurai have been borrowed by many films. Examples include plot elements in films such as Three Amigos (1986) by John Landis, borrowed scenes in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and various elements (including visual elements and the way the action, suspense and movement are presented) in the large-scale battle scenes of films such as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and numerous Marvel Studios films.[194][186] The opening action scene (where the hero is introduced in an action scenario unrelated to the rest of the plot) later seen in many action films (such as the pre-title scenes in James Bond films) has origins in Seven Samurai, whose first action scene has Kambei posing as a monk to save a boy from a kidnapper.[186] A visual element from Seven Samurai that has inspired a number of films is the use of rain to set the tone for action scenes; examples of this include Blade Runner (1982), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Matrix Revolutions.[195] Seven Samurai's film editing technique of cutting on motion and the mentor–student dynamics in the plot (also seen in other Kurosawa films) have also been widely adopted by Hollywood blockbusters (such as Marvel films).[186]

Sholay (1975), a "Curry Western" Indian film written by Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) and directed by Ramesh Sippy, has a plot that was loosely styled after Seven Samurai. Sholay became the most commercially successful Indian film and revolutionized Hindi cinema.[196][197] Later Indian films inspired by Seven Samurai include Mani Ratnam's Thalapathi (1991) and the Hindi film China Gate (1998).[195]

Director Zack Snyder said, "Bruce [Wayne] is having to go out and sort of 'Seven Samurai' the Justice League together” in the 2021 film Zack Snyder's Justice League.[198] According to Bryan Young of Syfy Wire, the Marvel Cinematic Universe films The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018) also owe "a great debt to" Seven Samurai, noting a number of similar plot and visual elements.[199] Other examples of films that reference Seven Samurai include the Australian science fiction film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), the American comedy film Galaxy Quest (1999), and the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven.[195]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ According to Hashimoto, Kurosawa was furious when he found out the project had been unilaterally abandoned by the screenwriter since he had not been involved in writing the initial treatment.[15] Hashimoto's research would later become the basis for the script of Harakiri (1962).[13]
  2. ^ Equivalent to $1,762,873 to $2,350,498 in 2024[35]
  3. ^ Equivalent to $223,297 in 2024[35]
  4. ^ Equivalent to ¥1.37 billion in 2019[40]
  5. ^ Equivalent to $6,534,383 in 2024[35]
  6. ^ Equivalent to $6,816,443 in 2024[35]
  7. ^ According to Galbraith, it was a studio decision taken by Toho, perhaps to pre-empt criticism that the film was too long.[103] Kobayashi writes that it was Kurosawa himself who re-edited the film in order to submit it and comply with the festival's regulations.[28]
  8. ^ Equivalent to ¥1.79 billion in 2019.[40]
  9. ^ Equivalent to $934,966 in 2024[35]
  10. ^ Equivalent to $5,078,866 in 2024[35]
  11. ^ Variety magazine reported $68,000 in ticket sales from the Guild Theatre by the end of the film's run in January 1957.[121][122][123][124][125][126] Equivalent to $786,453 in 2024.[35]
  12. ^ Variety magazine reported $113,600 in ticket sales from multiple theaters across the country in early 1957.[127] Equivalent to $1,271,809 in 2024.[35]
  13. ^ Equivalent to $482,439 in 2024[35]
  14. ^ Equivalent to $981,948 in 2024[35]
  15. ^ Equivalent to $27,252 in 2024[35]
  16. ^ Equivalent to $552,530 in 2024[35]
  17. ^ No awards were given to non-Finnish films.
  18. ^ Along with Sansho the Bailiff, La Strada, and On the Waterfront.[173]

References

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
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  3. ^ Sexton 2016.
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  13. ^ a b c d e Galbraith 2002, p. 171.
  14. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 170.
  15. ^ Hashimoto 2006, pp. 116–117.
  16. ^ Kobayashi 2025, p. 247.
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  18. ^ a b Galbraith 2002, p. 172.
  19. ^ a b Galbraith 2002, p. 175.
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  97. ^ Kobayashi 2025, p. 264.
  98. ^ Kobayashi 2025, pp. 270–271.
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  102. ^ a b c d Galbraith 2002, p. 193.
  103. ^ a b c d e Galbraith 2002, p. 192.
  104. ^ Melbourne International Film Festival 1956.
  105. ^ Green 1956a, p. 16.
  106. ^ Green 1956b, p. 5.
  107. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 195.
  108. ^ Richie 2001, p. 280.
  109. ^ King 2006.
  110. ^ French 2010.
  111. ^ BFI 2015.
  112. ^ Heath 2010.
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