Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Kurosawa and others
Starring Toshiro Mifune as General Makabe, Misa Uehara as Princess Yukihime, Minoru Chiaki as Tahei and Kamatari Fujiwara as Matakishi
Erich Sez…
The Hidden Fortress is a good demonstration of what makes Kurosawa great. First, the characters are real. As the Princess says, we see the best and worst of people, rather than seeing good and bad people. Weather they are the comically base peasants or the capable and willful general, the characters are fully and sympathetically drawn.
The film has a wealth of visually spectacular scenes. One has hundreds of prisoners swarming down stairs as twenty or thirty riflemen try to hold them off. The riflemen are in two rows that slowly move backward. One row shoots, then retreats behind the second and reloads as the second row shoots. Each volley pushes the swarm back momentarily and cuts its number. After the sequence repeats a couple of times it becomes clear that the swarm will overtake the riflemen. We see the emotions and behavior of individuals–courage, fear, rage–but the flow and outcome of the combat are mechanical. The scene is beautifully photographed and must have been a bitch to choreograph. In short, it is the work of a master.
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