Hidden Fortress (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

An entertaining and influential adventure!Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese adventure comedy The Hidden Fortress (1958) is an imaginative journey of transporting gold and a princess. It’s not a flawless masterpiece of filmmaking like some of Kurosawa’s other epics. I much prefer Rashomon, Ikiru, and Seven Samurai, but The Hidden Fortress is sure to delight fans of Kurosawa all the same for its good humor and neat adventure aspects alone. Kurosawa’s writing is centered around laughter and fun instead of high moral concepts, but he does cover The Hidden Fortress’ main theme of loyalty well.Kurosawa’s story appears to have been highly influential of George Lucas for Star Wars’ concepts for A New Hope as well as Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from what I watched. You can see the side wipes made popular in A New Hope here in The Hidden Fortress first. The duel between old samurai comrades is not unlike Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader’s chance encounter. The similarities go on and on really. The search for gold and the fool’s greed leading to betrayal feels like Tuco endlessly betraying The Man with No Name in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The two fools come across as lecherous versions of C-3PO and R2-D2 questing for gold with Star Wars from their perspective. In short, The Hidden Fortress is a fun adventure on its own merits, but its ideas are timeless archetypes for future film plotlines.Kurosawa’s direction is entertaining with farcical bits splitting up the epic adventure with some silly comedy. Not all the jokes land and hit hard, but you’ll likely enjoy The Hidden Forest. It does get rather long and slow in the middle, but there is plenty of payoff with exciting chases and humorous diversions. Masaru Sato’s score is uplifting and exciting with boisterous music!Toshiro Mifune is the main draw as the cool samurai general in hiding Rokurota Makabe trying his best to outsmart two idiots and save his princess’ life. Misa Uehara is fiery and intense in a playful role as Princess Yuki. I must mention Minoru Chiaki as Tahei and Kamatari Fujiwara as Matashichi. They are hilarious and a constant source of laughter in The Hidden Fortress. You feel bad as these two unlikely heroes desperately try to survive warfare, conquer their foes, and claim hidden gold as their own. They are made more ridiculous next to the ultra serious Mifune for extra laughs.The Hidden Fortress is not a flawless adventure, but it is a genuinely funny one.

The combination of director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune were responsible for some of the greatest films Japan ever produced. Roshomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro to name a few are world famous. However what I consider their best collaboration is actually The Hidden Fortress released in 1958. It’s the story of a defeated princess, her top general and two poor and peasant soldiers attempting to escape. It mixes comedy, with the samurai spirit, and human nature in a fantastic combination.The movie begins with two peasant soldiers Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara) trying to get home after being defeated in battle. However they are trapped in enemy territory held by the Yamana clan. The two eventually stumble upon General Rokurota Makabe (Toshiro Mifune) and Princess Yuki (Misa Uehara) of the defeated Akuzuki clan. General Makabe reveals to Tahei and Matashichi that they have gold and rely upon the two’s greed to get them to carry it for them to the neighboring Hayakawa territory where they can find refuge. The opening sets up all the themes of the movie. You have the Akuzuki who while defeated are not beaten because they still have their pride and determination. It was the common peasants like Tahei and Matashichi who fought these wars for the upper class samurai and got nothing out of it, and usually lost their lives. It’s not that they were inherently greedy, but simply being at the bottom in a society where there was little to no social mobility made them jump at the chance to get gold.The story was great as with most of Kurosawa’s work. Mifune played his part magnificently as the cunning general attempting to save his clan. Uehara was very young when she shot the movie but had a fierce presence about her whenever she was on screen. Chiaki and Fujiwara could really be called the main characters as the movie starts with them. They showed the lot of the lower classes, but also provided some laughs as well.The movie had a huge influence on George Lucas. He took the idea of a princess escaping her enemies to be the basis of his Stars Wars: A New Hope, and Tahei and Matashichi were transformed into R2D2 and C3PO.To me The Hidden Fortress has the perfect combination of story, acting, directing and comedy that makes it Kurosawa’s best effort even though it’s usually eclipsed by his other classics.C

This is not a perfect Kurosawa movie, but it's so much fun, it's worth watching and rewatching. The story is strangely shaped, fixed on a couple of peasant losers, a medieval Laurel and Hardy, caught in the middle of clan warfare just as firearms are changing Japanese samurai culture. The plot is so simple, it's almost nonexistent, but the relationships between the losers, a samurai general, the princess he protects, and his most powerful adversary are what make the film wonderfully engaging.Then there's the photography. No one has ever shot black and white exteriors in forests or mountains as gorgeously as Kurosawa. The images are complicated and luminous; who knows how he managed to light the locations. Yet the mise en scene and continuity are brilliantly constructed, so we follow the action perfectly. It's gorgeous.Then, there's a night-time Shinto fire ceremony set piece that is just batshit terrific.Every Kurosawa film is a text book if you're attentive. This nutty shaggy dog story is no exception.

Great transfer, watched this upscaled to 4k with oppo + OLED, impressive. Criterion has in my experience taken great care with their offerings and this is no exception.

This one dragged on. The highlight of the film for me was an action sequence that began at 1:20 and last for about 15 min. I did enjoy most of the back and forth banter between the two characters but some of it could have been cut out. Mifune, of course, was great the whole film while in contrast, I found the princess to be a bit annoying. She seemed to be over acting the part. At any rate, I mostly enjoyed the film but wont watch again.

Some films offer the Wow Factor first time round. Some get into your bloodstream only on repeated viewing. Only the very best films manage to do both, and this is one.I have loved this film at the first, second, third and fourth times of watching. The story is 'basic' as George Lucas rightly observes - in his short but illuminating interview which is the BFI DVD's sole Extra he makes the clear point that there are only a mere handful of stories to tell - but that's not what's important.So what makes it great? First and foremost Kurosawa's wide-angle visual imagination is as stunning as Toshiro Mifune's acting. What could be more memorable, for example, as the panoramic shot early on where a huge band of naked, shave-headed slaves being whipped one way, runs into a similar band being whipped the other? The aftermath of war has rarely been portrayed with such astute, black humour. Indeed a kind of grim, death's-head comedy underlies the whole film, allied of course to the fairy-tale delicacy of the story-telling.And how wonderful to have a historical epic like this - with its samurai duels, adventures and folk festivals - told from the perspective of the little people at the bottom (the two peasants) rather than the princesses and generals. The magic is, that it simultaneously shows how the ivory-tower Princess herself learns about ordinary life, and learns to love it: the whirling dance of the fire-festival, where she dances incognito amongst her people, is perhaps the most moving event of the whole film, as well as its plot pivot.This is a marvel, beautifully paced with fast action sequences (in John Ford style) alternating with short, beautiful lyrical interludes. It's part Shakespearean romance, part Samurai epic, and part Japanese Ealing Comedy! At all events, once seen it will never be forgotten.

How can one not want to watch the inspiration for the two memorable Star Wars robots . Akira Kurosawa's great influencerevealed again . A must see . Seven Samurai /Magnificent Seven : Hidden Fortress / Star Wars and more....

Very enjoyable journey, with engaging characters, humour, stunning scenery, & limited but impressive action sequences. I am a big fan of Kurosawa's samurai masterpieces, but Hidden Fortress feels refreshingly open & free compared to the dynastic & military struggles seen in many of his other works. Hidden Fortress is also interesting as one of the key inspirations for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

the film quality and picture was good

I've reviewed this previously.....I still like the dvd, which arrived early and in perfect condition. The subtitles remain poorly translated. The connection to Star Wars is tenuous, but if the two peasants were translated to robots and the whole set up moved to Scy-Fy, yes I can see the relation.