Criterion Collection #: 2Year: 1937
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Running Time: 114 minutes
DVD Release Date: September 5, 2006
Overview
A small farming village in 16th century Japan hires a group of samurai to protect their upcoming crop from bandits. There... a sprawling three-hour epic of beautiful film making reduced to a single sentence.
Toshirô Mifune, as always, is a standout, along with Takashi Shimura as the leader of the rag-tag band of nomadic warriors. Kurosawa's trademark deep focus as well as use of multiple cameras is evident throughout.
Video & Audio
Criterion's first release of this movie in 1998 crammed the entire 207 minutes onto a single disk; this new release spreads the movie over two disks, and the higher bitrate is evident in a much richer picture. Several scratches, blemishes, etc, evident in the earlier release have been fixed here, too. The audio is presented in both mono and 4.0 surround, though most of the soundstage is up front in either case.
Extras
Where to begin? We have not one but two audio commentaries: the one from the first release, along with a new commentary featuring a round table of film scholars. Not one but three documentaries: A 50 minute documentary on the making of Seven Samurai, a two-hour doc called My Life In Cinema, and a third called Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences. There are some trailers. There are production galleries. And there is a rather thick booklet with the expected essays and musings from various people from the world of film. I think that's plenty, don't you?
Parting Thoughts
What can you say about a movie that's over three hours long but seems to fly by in the blink of an eye? A black and white, non-wide screen, costume drama Japanese movie from the 50s with subtitles, no less. But don't let that scare you: Any fan of film in general and the action genre in particular should love this movie (and especially any fans of the US remake, The Magnificent Seven), and the newer three-disk Criterion release is a great representation of this movie.
4 comments:
Everyone knows my favorite part of the movie is when the young samurai looks in awe of the older one... you can actually see the adoration in the sheen of his eyes. Very nice acting/filmmaking.
Great post Hank! What I love about Kurosawa is you can go two directions with his films - you can get the fab samurai ones and you can get the contemplative urban ones (i.e. Ikiru). All are worth watching.
FYI, Criterion is rereleasing "High And Low" sometime this summer in a new anamorphic transfer with extras. I'm trying to decide if I'll upgrade or wait until they start rereleasing their catalog in glorious hi def now that the format war has been decided.
Spoiler alert: I did upgrade to the anamorphic version of High And Low. And then upgraded again to the Blu-ray version.
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