Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 26: Sat Jan 26

Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1957): Prince Charles Cinema, 2.20pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Akira Kurosawa Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Akira Kurosawa's best film is also his most Americanized, drawing on classical Hollywood conventions of genre (the western), characterization (ritual gestures used to distinguish the individuals within a group), and visual style (the horizon lines and exaggerated perspectives of John Ford). Of course, this 1954 film also returned something of what it borrowed, by laying the groundwork for the "professional" western (Rio Bravo, etc) that dominated the genre in the 50s and 60s. Kurosawa's film is a model of long-form construction, ably fitting its asides and anecdotes into a powerful suspense structure that endures for all of the film's 208 minutes. The climax—the battle in the rain and its ambiguous aftermath—is Kurosawa's greatest moment, the only passage in his work worthy of comparison with Mizoguchi.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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