The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Screenplay: Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, & Akira Kurosawa

Stars: Toshiro Mifune (General Rokurota Makabe), Misa Uehara (Princess Yuki), Minoru Chiaki (Tahei), Kamatari Fujiwara (Matashichi), Susumu Fujita (Hyoe Tadokoro), Takashi Shimura (The Old General)

MPAA Rating: NR

Year of Release: 1958

Country: Japan

The Hidden Fortress: Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

In the critical community during the 1950s, there were two paradoxical lines of criticism about postwar Japanese cinema. On the one hand, some critics complained that Japanese films were too exotic and densely layered, filled with exorbitant amounts of detail that weighed them down. On the other hand, there were those who complained that Japanese cinema was becoming too Westernized in its attempt to combine traditions of Eastern drama with conventional Hollywood style, thus losing the essence of what made them Japanese.

The latter of these complaints was often aimed at the films of Akira Kurosawa, who, throughout the 1950s, revolutionized the Japanese cinema with one masterpiece after another even though many of those films were not fully appreciated until they were shown outside his native country. Writing in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1958, André Bazin argued that Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) “can truly be said to have opened the gates of the West to the Japanese cinema.”

Today, Kurosawa is widely regarded as not only one of the greatest filmmakers to ever emerge out of Japan, but one of the greatest filmmakers ever. While he was duly influenced by the work of such American filmmakers as John Ford and Charlie Chaplin, his influence over international figures such as Sergio Leone and the “Film School Generation” of the 1970s (including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas) has been even more significant. Like Ford, Kurosawa was gifted with the ability to take “entertainment” genres like the action-adventure film and the Western and infuse them with a visual audacity that elevated the material above its roots by highlighting bold themes about social divisions, heroism, and sacrifice.

A perfect example of this is Kurosawa’s 1958 film The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin), which is justifiably well-known in the U.S. for having influenced the tone and narrative structure of George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). The Hidden Fortress is first and foremost an entertaining adventure story that fits neatly into the routine Japanese “chambara” genre, which are action epics set in the 16th century and dominated by feudalism. The narrative in The Hidden Fortress entails a samurai general named Rokurota Makabe (played by Kurosawa’s favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune, in his 11th of 16 collaborations with the director), who is charged with sneaking a feisty young princess named Yuki (Misa Uehara) and a huge treasure trove of 200 gold bars through heavily occupied enemy territory during a massive war between samurai clans.

Makabe and Yuki are aided by unlikely allies: two bumbling, greedy peasants named Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara). While they play largely as comic relief, with their cartoonish gesticulations, constant bickering, and greed-infected buffoonery causing the serious-minded Makabe no end of difficulty, these two peasants are also wonderfully endearing in all their human flaws. Their humanity is emphasized in the fact that Kurosawa tells the story largely through their eyes (the film both opens and ends with them), thus upending traditional hero-centered narration.

One thing that has always set Kurosawa’s action epics apart from so many others is his humanism—the way in which he is able to draw out the recognizably humane elements in all his characters, no matter how minor. Note, for example, in The Hidden Fortress how he develops the rivalry between Makabe and his arch-nemesis, an enemy general named Hyoe Tadokoro (Susumu Fujita). Kurosawa is not so much interested in them as enemies as he is in them as two sides of the same coin—both noble men fighting for their cause. It is little surprise, then, that they end up working together in the end, as they finally realize just how much they have in common, most notably their respect for each other as warriors. In other hands, this plot development might have felt forced or whimsical, but Kurosawa makes it work by staying true to the characters.

Of course, The Hidden Fortress is, as mentioned earlier, primarily an adventure film, and it is full of chases, near captures, sword fights, and epic battles, as well as plenty of humor, both of the slapstick and wordplay varieties. There are moments of intense violence (including the opening sequence), but much of the fighting is carefully choreographed to achieve a kind of visual elegance that is all-too-often lacking in American action films. At the same time, Kurosawa often lets the action run rampant, as in a breathtaking chase sequence involving Makabe running down two enemy soldiers that could easily have been lifted right out of an American Western.

The Hidden Fortress was one of the most expensive films made in postwar Japan and also the first to use the CinemaScope anamorphic widescreen process (here rebranded TohoScope), and Kurosawa makes great use of all the resources at his disposal. He utilizes the widescreen aspect ratio in innovative ways, both to expand the epic scope of the action (most notably a prisoner revolt during the first part of the film) and to frame his characters in ways that reinforce the emotional distance between them and their gradual coming together. For much of the film, Makabe is deeply distrustful of Tahei and Matashichi, as they are of him, and Kurosawa uses the width and depth of the screen to emphasize this repeatedly.

While The Hidden Fortress is not usually regarded as one of Kurosawa’s greatest films—it lacks the truly revolutionary nature of Rashomon or the cohesive epic grandeur of The Seven Samurai (1954)—it is nevertheless one of his most grandly entertaining, a bold adventure yarn that spans both time and culture. To speak of it as “minor Kurosawa” ultimately says less about the status of the film than it does about the greatness of its director.

The Hidden Foretress Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD Combo

Aspect Ratio	2.39:1
Audio	Japanese DTS-HD 3.0 surround (Perspect-a-Sound) Japanese DTS-HD 1.0 monaural
Subtitles	English
Supplements	Audio commentary by film historian Stephen Prince Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create 2001 Interview with filmmaker George Lucas about Kurosawa Trailer Essay by film scholar Catherine Russell
Distributor	The Criterion Collection
SRP	$39.95
Release Date	March 18, 2014

VIDEO & AUDIO
Criterion’s 2001 DVD of The Hidden Fortress was good for its time, but their new Blu-ray is an impressive step forward in terms of both audio and visual clarity. The new high-definition transfer in the film’s original Tohoscope aspect ratio of 2.39:1 was made from the original 35mm fine-grain master positive (the best surviving element, given the loss of the original negative), and further enhanced through digital restoration. The sharp, black-and-white photography by cinematographer Ichio Yamasaki looks beautiful, with incredible detail and an almost complete absence of any nicks, scratches, or other artifacts to mar the picture. Kurosawa employed a great deal of deep focus in his first widescreen effort, and this transfer does full justice to the scope and depth of his compositions. Black levels are deep and rich, and the fine shadings of gray bring out all the nuances of the naturalistic settings. The Hidden Fortress was original released in a long-extinct audio format called “Perspect-a-Sound,” which was designed by Robert Fine. Used throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s as an alternative to CinemaScope’s four-track stereo format, Perspect-a-Sound encoded three discrete low frequencies into a single monaural optical soundtrack. During theatrical showings, these low frequencies were decoded by a device called a Perspecta Integrator that then “steered” the sound into right, left, and center speakers by increasing or decreasing the volumes. Thus, a monaural soundtrack could be given the aural illusion of three-track stereo sound, even though it was really just three-channel mono in which each individual speaker might play louder or softer at any given moment. To recreate the theatrical experience of hearing The Hidden Fortress in Perspect-a-Sound, Criterion has encoded the disc’s lossless DTS-HD soundtrack into discrete three-channel LCR stereo (it is actually a 5.1-channel soundtrack, but the surround and LFE channels are empty). The result sounds like an expanded mono soundtrack, with the three front speakers more or less active throughout the entire movie. There are some slight imaging effects when sound moves across the front soundstage in accordance with a camera move, but these effects are generally limited. In terms of general clarity, soundtrack is excellent throughout, with good fidelity and a clean, clear sound. The disc also includes a DTS-HD monaural soundtrack.
SUPPLEMENTS
There are two new supplements added to the Blu-ray upgrade of The Hidden Fortress. The first is an audio commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Cinema, a book-length study of Kurosawa’s films and a previous contributor to Criterion’s releases of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Ran, Red Beard, and Throne of Blood, among others. As on those commentaries, Prince is lively, informative, and extremely detailed in his historical and aesthetic analysis. Although it is often written off as one of Kurosawa’s lesser films, Prince reveals impressive depths in The Hidden Fortress and shows how it was particularly influential on Sergio Leone’s films, especially The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The other new supplement is a half-hour documentary on the making of the film that was originally broadcast on Japanese television as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create. Making a repeat appearance is an eight-minute interview from 2001 with George Lucas, who speaks briefly about the connections between The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars (something he has always proudly acknowledged). However, while he addresses how Kurosawa’s film influenced his own (most notably the use of C-3PO and R2-D2 to tell the story), he seems more interested in talking about Kurosawa’s career and influence in general, and he offers some nice insights into what made Kurosawa such a great director. Also included is a widescreen original theatrical trailer, presented in Japanese with optional English subtitles.

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Overall Rating: (3.5)