Hidden Fortress has to be the most watchable and fun of all Kurosawa's pictures. While he made a lot of highly entertaining action flicks, Hidden Fortress is pure adventure. The pace never lets down for a second, but Kurosawa still finds time for poignancy and humanity.
Kurosawa always aimed to adapt his technical style to suit the story and atmosphere of the picture he was making. Here he keeps his camera moving more than in any of his previous pictures, matching the speedy pace of the plot. He opens the film with the camera trundling along behind the protagonists, letting us know that we, the audience, are effectively following these two peasants on their journey. From then on this way of opening would become something of a Kurosawa trademark you see at again at the beginning of Yojimbo and Redbeard.
This was Kurosawa's first picture in the scope aspect ratio, and he appears to have embraced it right from the start. This is very much an outdoor picture, and there are plenty of massive landscape shots with scenery reminiscent of the plains and mountains of the American west. There is generally careful symmetry to his shot composition, with characters or points of action in the dead centre of the screen, which is actually not that common. However with typical Kurosawa adaptability the exception here is the two peasants, who simply scramble or sprawl all over the frame. It's also not very often you see a black-and-white film in scope, since in Hollywood with its all or nothing production values Technicolor and widescreen generally went hand in hand.
The characterisation of the two peasants is perhaps a bit weak, as there really is no difference between the pair of them. While the two actors bring a slightly different manner to each of their characters, there is really nothing one would say or do that the other wouldn't. In his sleeve notes Philip Kemp describes them as "a less lovable Laurel and Hardy", but to me they're much more of a Tweedledum and Tweedledee duo.
The music in Hidden Fortress is one of its best features, especially the incredibly powerful and rousing main theme. This is probably the first really great score from Masaru Sato, who had been working with Kurosawa since 1955's Ikimono no Kiroku.
Despite the light feel of this picture, like virtually all Kurosawa's films from this era there is a warm humanism at its heart. While there is ruthless selfishness and little else in the first half of the story, the characters are changed by their experiences. By the end the upper class figures have learnt to see through the rigid structures of class, gender and that were so strong in feudal Japan. Even the greedy peasants learn to share. Maybe all that seems a little forced and unsubtle, but who cares? This isn't Kurosawa at his deepest, but it's great feel-good entertainment. At any rate, you come away from it feeling good about the characters.
One final point while everyone seems to know that this was a major part of George Lucas' inspiration for Star Wars, has anyone else noticed the similarities between Hidden Fortress and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? A group of people who don't really trust each other and would as soon double cross each other as help each other, working together purely to get their hands on a fortune in gold, set against the backdrop of a war. Then again, these stories are as old as the hills and will keep on cropping up time and again.
Kurosawa always aimed to adapt his technical style to suit the story and atmosphere of the picture he was making. Here he keeps his camera moving more than in any of his previous pictures, matching the speedy pace of the plot. He opens the film with the camera trundling along behind the protagonists, letting us know that we, the audience, are effectively following these two peasants on their journey. From then on this way of opening would become something of a Kurosawa trademark you see at again at the beginning of Yojimbo and Redbeard.
This was Kurosawa's first picture in the scope aspect ratio, and he appears to have embraced it right from the start. This is very much an outdoor picture, and there are plenty of massive landscape shots with scenery reminiscent of the plains and mountains of the American west. There is generally careful symmetry to his shot composition, with characters or points of action in the dead centre of the screen, which is actually not that common. However with typical Kurosawa adaptability the exception here is the two peasants, who simply scramble or sprawl all over the frame. It's also not very often you see a black-and-white film in scope, since in Hollywood with its all or nothing production values Technicolor and widescreen generally went hand in hand.
The characterisation of the two peasants is perhaps a bit weak, as there really is no difference between the pair of them. While the two actors bring a slightly different manner to each of their characters, there is really nothing one would say or do that the other wouldn't. In his sleeve notes Philip Kemp describes them as "a less lovable Laurel and Hardy", but to me they're much more of a Tweedledum and Tweedledee duo.
The music in Hidden Fortress is one of its best features, especially the incredibly powerful and rousing main theme. This is probably the first really great score from Masaru Sato, who had been working with Kurosawa since 1955's Ikimono no Kiroku.
Despite the light feel of this picture, like virtually all Kurosawa's films from this era there is a warm humanism at its heart. While there is ruthless selfishness and little else in the first half of the story, the characters are changed by their experiences. By the end the upper class figures have learnt to see through the rigid structures of class, gender and that were so strong in feudal Japan. Even the greedy peasants learn to share. Maybe all that seems a little forced and unsubtle, but who cares? This isn't Kurosawa at his deepest, but it's great feel-good entertainment. At any rate, you come away from it feeling good about the characters.
One final point while everyone seems to know that this was a major part of George Lucas' inspiration for Star Wars, has anyone else noticed the similarities between Hidden Fortress and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? A group of people who don't really trust each other and would as soon double cross each other as help each other, working together purely to get their hands on a fortune in gold, set against the backdrop of a war. Then again, these stories are as old as the hills and will keep on cropping up time and again.