Samurai Films (6 page)

Throne of Blood
gains most of its dramatic mileage from atmospheric storytelling, rather than frenetic action, but this film contains one of the most distinct and memorable action scenes of any samurai film. The scene in which Washizu’s men turn on him, attempting to kill him with vast numbers of arrows, is particularly striking. Washizu frantically runs from one side of a balcony to the other, arrows thudding into the wood around him. His death scene, although bloodless, has to be one of the most shocking seen in any samurai film.

Throne of Blood
is a classic fusion of an archetypical story with highly skilled direction and performances. One of Kurosawa’s finest films, and an example of the samurai film at its best.

Two peasant prisoners of war, Matashichi and Tahei, escape the Yamana clan and discover the hidden fortune of the defeated Akizuki clan. The two peasants are found by General Rokurota, who, along with Princess Yuki and the gold, is staying in the Akizuki hidden fortress, a building carefully concealed in the mountains. Princess Yuki and the gold are both wanted badly by the Yamana, and Rokurota needs to get them safely to the friendly Hayakawa clan. Hearing Matashichi and Tahei’s bold plan to actually travel through Yamana territory to get to Hayakawa, Rokurota decides to go with them. He ensures the peasants’ help by promising them a share of the gold. The high-spirited Princess Yuki pretends to be a mute peasant girl, as the unusual group sets out on their journey, carrying a cargo of gold, hidden in pieces of firewood. Narrowly avoiding capture many times, Rokurota and Yuki are eventually caught by their enemies. They escape execution with the help of Hyoe Tadakoro, a Yamana general who is impressed by Yuki’s spirit and leadership. Safely in Hayakawa territory, Yuki rewards the peasants with a small trinket. Grateful to have escaped with their lives, the two friends head home.

By far the most commercial of Akira Kurosawa’s films,
The Hidden
Fortress
is nonetheless an exciting adventure, featuring impressive and well-realised scenes, on a much larger scale than any of his previous films.

Kurosawa makes good use of the widescreen format (this is his first widescreen film) and a large budget to tell an epic story. Legions of extras are utilised to create convincing armies on the march, army encampments and a huge peasant procession. Among these scenes is a frenetic sequence depicting a riot, as prisoners of war attempt to escape. Kurosawa fills a darkened screen with writhing bodies as the prisoners swarm over their guards, suggesting the horror and confusion of violence on a large scale.

The scenes in which Princess Yuki and General Rokurota are pursued by large numbers of enemy troops are also worthy of mention, helped along by sombre music as the Yamana troops march through the forest. The action scenes throughout
The Hidden Fortress
are also of a high quality, particularly the spear fight between Rokurota and Hyoe. The two battle all over a Yamana camp in a fast-paced and exciting scene.

The cast of this film all perform admirably. The beautiful Misa Uehara brings a nice level of haughtiness to the high-spirited Princess Yuki, while Toshiro Mifune is flawless as the stern Rokurota, giving a slight promise of his future, influential performance in
Yojimbo
. Susumu Fujita and Toshiko Higuchi also perform very well in their respective roles.

Interestingly, despite the large numbers of extras used for lavish staging, the most influential element of
The Hidden Fortress
is the way much of the story is told from the perspective of the two peasants, Matashichi and Tahei. The constant bickering between these two characters is always amusing, particularly in the way they always seem to forget all their petty arguments the moment trouble looms. Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara are to be commended for the energy they bring to their roles; despite their obvious greed the peasants come across as likeable characters. Much of the humour in the film comes from the way these two interact with both each other and the remaining characters. The scene in which Matashichi and Tahei attempt to convince Princess Yuki, who they believe is deaf and mute, that they want to take her gold-laden horse for a drink, is particularly amusing as the two engage in increasingly stupid sign language, all the while bickering over who is doing a better job.

However, the two peasant characters do not only provide comic relief. They also allow the audience a way into the film.
The Hidden
Fortress
tells a story of royalty and generals, of big events involving important people. While exciting, such stories are often difficult for audiences to relate to, as they have little in common with the central characters. In Matashichi and Tahei, writers Shinobu Hashimoto and Ryuzo Kikushima give the audience two regular guys, just trying to get along in life, something most of us can easily relate to.

It was this element of
The Hidden Fortress
that had a large influence on world cinema. George Lucas has stated that the film was one of his main inspirations when writing the script for
Star Wars:
A New Hope
. In particular, the characters of Matashichi and Tahei inspired him to tell his story largely from the perspective of two seemingly unimportant characters caught up in big events, the two droids, R2-D2 and C3P0. The characters of Leia and Obi Wan Kenobi also bear a slight resemblance to Yuki and Rokurota. Lucas has stated that earlier versions of the script of
Star Wars:
A New Hope
actually contained scenes in which Leia and Obi Wan were making their way through enemy territory, as Yuki and Rokurota do in
The Hidden Fortress
.

The Hidden Fortress
is a very enjoyable adventure film, utilising widescreen photography and large, well-staged scenes to tell an epic story. Worth seeing alone for the amusing characterisation of Matashichi and Tahei.

Komaki, a boisterous warrior with a large nose, is in love with Lady Ochii, his childhood friend, but she loves a handsome young samurai named Jurota. Putting aside his own wishes, Komaki helps Jurota woo Ochii by writing him romantic poems to recite. This works for a while, and culminates in Komaki making an impassioned speech to Ochii, declaring his love for her, from the cover of darkness outside her window. Ochii believes Jurota to have made this speech and embraces him, but before their relationship can develop any further war breaks out. At the Battle of Sekigahara Komaki and Jurota fight on the losing side and they narrowly escape the battlefield. Realising Komaki’s words are what Ochii really loves, Jurota urges him to make it back to her safely, committing suicide so as not to slow him down. Ten years pass and Ochii has become a nun. Komaki continues to visit her, but he is found by the Tokugawa, who still hunt him. Tricked into a cowardly ambush, Komaki receives a fatal blow to his head. He manages to visit Ochii one last time as he dies, and as she hears him read to her, she realises it was Komaki who made that speech at her window. Komaki faces death bravely, regretful that he was killed in such a dishonourable fashion, but determined not to lose his indomitable spirit.

An adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s play
Cyrano de Bergerac,
Samurai
Saga
makes use of some interesting subject matter. The material works very well in the context of a samurai film, and director Hiroshi Inagaki should be commended for utilising such unusual material.

Inagaki is able to capture both the pathos and humour present in Rostand’s play. Toshiro Mifune’s energetic performance as Komaki adds humour to the scenes where he and others make fun of his unusually large nose. Worthy of mention is a scene early in the film when Komaki disrupts a kabuki performance. Angered, Lord Nagashima’s samurai attempt to insult Komaki, but he beats them to it, making fun of his own nose in an exaggerated performance, which is very amusing. Komaki then goes on to defeat Nagashima’s men on the stage, composing a song as he does so. Inagaki and his actors are able to bring just the right amount of pathos to the more dramatic scenes of
Samurai Saga
, without descending into melodrama. The final scenes of the film are handled very well by Toshiro Mifune and Yoko Tsukasa, whose convincing performances make Kamaki and Ochii’s fate all the more tragic.

The cinematography in
Samurai Saga
is up to the usual high standards of Inagaki’s films, containing many memorable images. Inagaki and Mifune handle Komaki’s death scene especially well; he challenges death among the falling petals of a cherry tree, creating a beautiful image, evocatively capturing the sadness and inevitability of the act.

The action scenes in
Samurai Saga
are quite unusual, and accompany a tonal shift in the film itself. The action that takes place in the first half of the film is largely comedic and bloodless, such as Komaki’s amusing humiliation of Nagashima’s samurai on the kabuki stage, and Jurota’s battle with a large group of samurai, watched gleefully by Komaki. No one is hurt in these scenes; fallen samurai simply get to their feet and run away. This all changes after the Battle of Sekigahara sequence, which utilises some of the gritty battle scenes shot for
Miyamoto Musashi
. The scenes where Komaki, Jurota and other survivors of the losing side are gunned down by Nagashima’s troops are brutal by comparison. The choreography of Komaki’s last battle is also a contrast to the earlier scenes; he dodges among alleys, using the close quarters to dispatch his multiple opponents one at a time, and, in these scenes, they actually stay dead.

This shift in tone is very effective. Inagaki creates a gentler, whimsical mood in the first half of his film, which is shattered by the war and its subsequent violence. The earlier comedic violence causes the audience to let their guard down, which makes the real violence all the more effective.

Cyrano de
Bergerac
, samurai style. In the hands of a skilled director like Hiroshi Inagaki this works very well, and proves the flexibility of the genre.

The 1960s saw an explosion of excellent samurai films, which forever changed the genre. This trend was brought about by Akira Kurosawa and two of his early 1960s films,
Yojimbo
and
Sanjuro
. Both starred Toshiro Mifune as Sanjuro, a ronin with a wry sense of humour and a quick draw. They featured graphic violence as it had never before been seen in samurai films; arms were cut off and shown falling to the ground, and in one particularly notable scene, blood spurts in a fine mist from the chest of one of Sanjuro’s fallen opponents. Furthermore, Kurosawa’s films had a wonderfully dark sense of humour, with Sanjuro fashioned as a callous but immensely likeable anti-hero. The moments of violence were used sparingly and to great effect in Kurosawa’s films, and clearly audiences approved.
Yojimbo
and
Sanjuro
were both very successful commercially, so much so that Toei and the other companies were forced to take notice.

The commercial success of Kurosawa’s work meant that the 1960s samurai films were free of the formulaic plots and slow choreography that had plagued many throughout the 1950s. This shift in focus ensured their popularity throughout the 1960s, with many released each year. This gave directors such as Kenji Misumi, Kihachi Okamoto, Masaki Kobayashi and Hideo Gosha a great deal more freedom, and resulted in consistently high-quality films throughout the 1960s. These samurai films were characterised by Sanjuro-style anti-heroism and graphic violence, but many also told moving stories, and were far more than the simple genre films they appeared to be.