In this second entry of the Roger Ebert Archive, we're gonna be explore his thoughts on one of the films that helped inspire Star Wars, The Hidden Fortress. His review of the film is not on his website but you can find it on his Movie Home Companion book series or an emulator of a floppy disc for DOS computers that contains Ebert's thoughts and essays. You can find the emulator on archive.org. As for the movie itself, he gave it 4 stars out of 4 and even recommended the Criterion Collection Laserdisc version, which is letterboxed in it's original wide screen ratio (this review is written in the late 80's, before Ebert had DVD and Blu ray).
NOTE: Ebert's thoughts will be quoted.
"The Hidden Fortress is grand, bold moviemaking - a Japanese adventure classic that combines elements of samurai films, Westerns, and myths of heroes and commoners. It does something else, too. It reveals many of the sources of the Star Wars movies so clearly that you can almost see R2-D2, C-3PO, and Princess Leia there on the screen. Now that we had two sequels to Star Wars, how about this as a prologue?"
"The movie was made in 1958 by Akira Kurosawa, the greatest of Japanese directors, and it attracted a lot of attention at the time. It was the first Japanese movie in Cinemascope, it was one of the most expensive Japanese movies ever made, and it confirmed Kurosawa's role as a master of adventure epics. His Seven Samurai (1954) inspired Hollywood's The Magnificent Seven, but it took George Lucas to use The Hidden Fortress as the starting point for the most popular American movies ever made."
"The irony is that The Hidden Fortress has hardly been seen in this country. A much-shortened version had brief engagements in the early 1960s, but then it went out of release and the rights were allowed to lapse until late in 1983, when, for the first time, this uncut 139-minute version was brought to America. The best video version is the Criterion Collection's laserdisc, with a letterboxed format so Kurosawa's entire wide-screen compositions are visible."
"The debt of the Star Wars pictures to Kurosawa is obvious almost from the opening shots, when two hapless Army underlings, one short, one tall, stagger through an empty landscape bemoaning their fates. Then the other story elements fall into place: a brave, outcast warrior general; a proud and fierce princess who is forced to disguise herself as a commoner; a feared military leader who first opposes the princess's cause but then supports it; a mysterious hidden fortress that must be captured, defended, or destroyed; and, of course, chases and swordfights and appeals to tradition and history."
"Does all this sound vaguely familiar? Lucas gives full credit: He told Kurosawa that he saw the movie in film school, never forgot it, and used the characters of the two foot soldiers as an inspiration for his two inseparable androids."
"Kurosawa has made better movies, but never one more filled with humor and energy. His story isn't made into a dirge about honor and violence, but into a celebration of high spirits. The two foot soldiers enlist in the service of the general (Toshiro Mifune) without knowing who he is or that the woman accompanying him is their princess. They all conspire to move a wagonload of gold from one kingdom to another, concealing the gold inside sticks of firewood and hiding themselves in a procession to a firewood festival. There are lose scrapes, double crosses, cases of mistaken identity, and a thrilling lance-fight between Mifune and that other great Japanese star, Sumusu Fujita. An overnight stop at a rowdy frontier town will remind you of the saloon planet in Star Wars."
"There are also several breathtakingly great individual shots. One comes early in the film, when thousands of prisoners riot and run crazily down a long, sweeping flights of steps, overwhelming their captors. Another comes during the duel with the lances, when the troops in the background are choreographed to mirror every move of the fight with their own body movements. And there's the firewood festival, with waves of celebrants dancing around the flames in a pagan dream. Seeing The Hidden Fortress is like visiting the wellspring of the Force."
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