The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“It is not only Kurosawa’s most vital picture, it is perhaps the best Japanese film ever made.”

Donald Richie

Celebrating 70 years, Kurosawa Akira’s stirring epic receives an anniversary restoration befitting its status as one of international cinema’s immovable masterworks. The film is set in 16th-century Japan, where seven unemployed swordsmen are hired to defend a village against marauding bandits. Over a year in the making, Seven Samurai became the most expensive movie ever produced in Japan, nearly bankrupting Toho Studios. Its debt to the Hollywood Western (the films of John Ford in particular) was openly acknowledged by Kurosawa; Seven Samurai, in turn, influenced a wide range of non-Japanese cinema, from the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone to the Star Wars cycle of George Lucas, and was remade in America as The Magnificent Seven. Kurosawa pioneered the use of multiple cameras and the telephoto lens for the tour-de-force battle sequences. This brilliant, kinetic movie invented the modern action film. Kurosawa mainstays Mifune Toshiro and Shimura Takashi head the large cast.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“A cinematic masterpiece … Its power is undiminished.”

J. Hoberman, The New York Times

“[Seven Samurai] inspired endless imitations, but the original has lost none of its magic … The glorious vigour and strength of this film is presented with such theatrical relish and flair: its energy flashes out of the screen like a sword.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“A monolith of world cinema, an exciting action spectacle that doesn’t waste a minute of its three-and-a-half-hour running time … The scope of its human comedy, tragedy, generosity, compassion—and all the grace notes in between—contains multitudes.”

Matthew Thrift, BFI