The consistently impressive BFI Film Classics series can be
separated into three overlapping categories. There are the
painstakingly researched accounts of a film's production and
reception (David Robinson's Das Cabinet des Dr
Caligari (1920) is one of the series' best examples);
personal responses to a film (Salman Rushdie on The Wizard of
Oz (1939), Melvyn Bragg on The Seventh Seal
(1957), and Colin McCabe's excellent Performance
(1970)); and the more traditional textual analysis (Edward
Buscombe's The Searchers (1956) and V.F. Perkins' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)). Joan Mellen's
monograph on Seven Samurai (1954) cuts a pathway
between the latter two categories.
Opening with Donald Richie's claim that Kurosawa's epic
Jidai-geki is "the best Japanese film ever made",
Mellen goes further, positing that Kurosawa was, and remains,
Japan's greatest film-maker. Not content to stop there, she places
Seven Samurai on the pedestal, alongside Battleship Potemkin
(1925), marked "great works of art". And that's just the
first page. Thankfully, the study soon adopts a more measured
approach to what is arguably Kurosawa's best film, drawing upon
Japan's history and Kurosawa's own upbringing, in its analysis of a
complex and multi-layered drama.
Using Kurosawa's own recollections of his relationship with his
father, Mellen's introduction highlights the experiences that had an
effect upon the way the director moulded his vision of a society in
chaos. She links the film with the more reflective Ikiru (1952),
claiming that although Seven Samurai is, on the surface, a
jidai-geki, or period film, it possesses qualities that also mark it
out as Ofuna-cho, or home drama. Though the bandits fit the two
dimensional characters that frequently populate Jidai-geki, the
eponymous heroes of the film, and a number of the peasants, are more
complex and rounded than would normally be expected of the genre.
Moreover, their traits mark them out as unexceptional, ordinary,
individuals. Each has their own problems, failings and unfulfilled
dreams. They are, in essence like the characters that populate
Ofuna-cho, "people like you and me".
Mellen also expands on Seven Samurai's place in
Japanese history. Unlike most Jidai-geki, which were set in the
relatively peaceful Tokugawa period (1603-1868), Kurosawa chose the
earlier Sengoku period (1467-1568); a hundred-year reign of terror,
in which clans battled with each other for power and land.
Disenfranchised samurai roamed the land, often suffering at the
hands of peasant communities, who attacked wandering ronin, killing
them and hoarding their weapons. With no discernible leader to pay
their levies to, the peasants prospered. They were, however, also
prey to samurai who had grouped together to loot and pillage. Such
bandits appear as the villains in Kurosawa's film.
Mellen draws specific attention to Kurosawa's representation of
masculinity and male bonding, and the way he shows the dissolution
of class distinction in periods of social turmoil. He stands
alongside Ford, Hawks, and more recently Mann and Schrader, as one
of the most articulate and perceptive chroniclers of the place of
men, both in society in general and in their relations with each
other. The film's pace allows him to build up the relationship
between each of the Samurai, which, Mellen states, reveals as much
about the his own values as it does those of Japanese society in
general. The film's length also allows for an analysis of the
differences between the peasants and samurai and how they erode when
faced with the upheavals of civil unrest. This culminates in the
final battle, where samurai are indistinguishable from peasants as
they fight the bandits in the torrential rainstorm.
There is also the use of wind as a metaphor for change. From the
arrival of the bandits in the town, to the climactic battle, wind
ushers in both good and bad fortune for all concerned (though only
once does Mellen consider the link between the winds of change in
the film and the apocalyptic winds that devastated Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945, which also prompted massive social and political
changes).
Mellen draws on Griffith and Eisenstein in her thorough reading
of both the film's narrative and technical achievements. Kurosawa's
frenetic editing style and use of furious tracking shots,
particularly in the many chase sequences, are seen as evidence of a
constant desire to push the limits of what was accepted in cinema at
that time. She also examines critical responses to Kurosawa's work,
questioning why Seven Samurai is the least analysed of his most
acclaimed films, and looking at the backlash from younger
generations of film-makers, who regarded his films as little more
that "simplistic humanism".
There is also an interesting comparison with John
Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (1960). Though entertaining, the
film is shown to be inferior to Kurosawa's on all levels.
Unfortunately, she does not look further for other examples of the
wide-reaching influence of the film (what about the Roger Corman
produced, John Sayles penned Battle Beyond the Stars
(1980)?).
A thorough and for the most part engrossing analysis, Mellen's
monograph does occasionally suffer from the hyperbole that normally
afflicts film reviewers rather than critics. Most surprisingly, for
all the claims she makes about the film's status as a great work of
art, she forgets to mention that it remains a superior example of
cinematic entertainment. Nevertheless, the study will appeal to both
fans of the film and those curious about the film and director's
place in Japanese cinema.
From kamera.co.uk
<
BACK