Akira Kurosawa has always been the most problematic of the great Japanese directors. Having achieved the first success of his country in the West Rashomon (1950), followed by obtaining victories denied a Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. There are many reasons for this: the accessibility of the work of Kurosawa, sources of inspiration, often familiar to Western audiences and sensitivity clearly cosmopolitan and international films. This was confirmed in The Seven Samurai (1954) which became a huge hit worldwide. The suspicion that it made little Japanese film deliberately to please the western audience seemed to be corroborated when Hollywood made a remake of this movie will change virtually nothing The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges always competent.
Contending with some reason that Mizoguchi historical epics were excellent except with respect to its battle scenes, Kurosawa was raised to balance its fight sequences and confusion The Seven Samurai. To give viewers the feeling they were present at the scene watching something that was actually happening, Kurosawa introduced the use of multiple cameras at once (shooting the same scene from different angles and then making a choice more vivid and spectacular of all time) and telephoto (with which you get the illusion that the action is much closer to the camera than it actually is.)
breaks also systematically used in the assembly to accelerate the action (a one character asks a question and answer site in another completely different elimimándose and cutscenes). And I made six years before Jean-Luc Godard revolutionized the language of film by using the same procedure the end of the trip (1960). The result is a film in constant motion, going from one place to another with rigor and intensity, so the threat of violence is present in every moment to burst in spectacular fashion in the final sequence.
Of course, all these techniques are already commonplace, having arrived even television. But in those moments, seemed highly innovative to Western audiences, especially when compared with the static and styling of other films Nipponese, who seemed to adopt a formalism derived from traditional Japanese painting. When trying to capture the action on the fly, without knowing in advance which of the various cameras used would better, Kurosawa could not logically be composed with much care and precision as Ozu and Mizoguchi. But to infer that Seven Samurai is a movie "Little Japan" is completely false. The formalism of much of Japanese art is based on the movements suspended and if it freezes any frame of this film will get a recorded such as Hokusai .
Similarly, although Seven Samurai story seems so clear, even Manichaean like many westerns, contains many subtleties and ambiguities. For example, when the emissaries of the village for the first time are covered Kembei amazed how it's done shaving head priest and pretend to catch a thief and murderer. According to Japanese tradition, the fact that a samurai shaves head indicates either that has fallen out of favor or that is about to leave the world and become a priest. One of the greatest ironies of the film (and the remake of Sturges omitted entirely) is to be the half-witted Kikuchigo, the innocent, to reveal this truth to Kambei. When the seven samurais first arrive in the village, its inhabitants disappear terror and only return when they are threatened an attack from bandits. While the outraged villagers ashamed Kikuchigo for its lack of logic, the samurai are offended to discover a hidden reservoir of arms, indicating that the villagers have been dedicated to killing and robbing other samurai homeless.
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