The Hidden Fortress, also known as The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress, is a 1958 Akira Kurosawa film. This film was Kurosawa’s first to be filmed in widescreen Tohoscope, which would be a format that the director would use for the next decade. The Hidden Fortress was originally presented in Perspectasound, which would thankfully and beautifully recreated for the lovely Criterion Collection DVD I was able to see the film on. Perspectasound was created in 1954 and also used on films such as White Christmas, the 1954 reissue of Gone With the Wind, and Vertigo.
The Hidden Fortress is probably best known among film buffs as being an influence on George Lucas and his Star Wars films. It also marks a definitive moment in Kurosawa’s career, however. The film came about after the success of early films like Seven Samurai and Rashomon, as Kurosawa began to abandon his early interest in modern set films and began to focus more of his energy on period pieces. Kurosawa began to elaborate on elements he presented in his modern set films, but moved them to period locations and built on these elements in the “jidai” settings. This meant Kurosawa used a concentration on moral themes in his period pieces and The Hidden Fortress certainly focuses in on those.
The story of The Hidden Fortress, like most Kurosawa stories, is both elaborate and simplistic. It involves two farmers, Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara) and Tahei (Minoru Chiaki), as they have escaped a prison camp and are scavenging the wilderness for gold. Just as they stumble upon a fortune, they are happened upon by General Rokurota Makabe (Toshiro Mifune). The General is secretly safeguarding Princess Yuki (Misa Uehara) in a camp in the hidden valley fortress. He threatens the two farmers and dispatches them to help escort the Princess and the gold through regional battles to regain her rightful throne in another area. On the way, the personalities of the group are tested through elements of fear and greed.
Kurosawa’s films were highly Westernized versions of their Japanese counterparts. When other filmmakers were doing period pieces in feudal Japanese settings, Kurosawa was using those settings and telling a story that more likely represented the films of John Ford or Sam Peckinpah. Kurosawa broke the mold in a lot of ways, setting up plot devices that are now familiar to modern filmgoers. In The Hidden Fortress, he utilizes humour to draw the audience further in to the adventure story, which is clearly a common device used now. Kurosawa certainly wasn’t the first to do this, but it does demonstrate more than a passing fancy with Western filmmaking for the gifted director.
The Hidden Fortress is a type of epic morality play. When the General, played elegantly by Mifune, says of the two scoundrel farmers that he can “rely on their greed,” he means it. These two farmers are as greedy as can be, putting the group in danger through their stupidity but, at the same time, salvaging hope for the General and the Princess to get the Princess back where she belongs on the throne. Without the two scoundrels, all might be lost. With the two scoundrels, it’s more of the same. Princess Yuki also grapples with a morality of her own, dealing with a sort of tomboyish exterior while becoming crippled with the emotional weight of her duty internally. This is shown best during a rare superimposed double image in which she is shown sobbing within the vision of her flag.
The look of The Hidden Fortress is beautiful, too. Using the widescreen filming techniques, Kurosawa’s gifted hand draws us in to the action with clarity and excitement. The action and adventure sequences are broad in scale and the characters leap off of the screen with vigour and intensity. While The Hidden Fortress does not have the sweeping scope of a film like Kurosawa’s later masterpiece Ran, it still packs a wallop when it comes to setting the scene for fun adventure. With the widescreen technique, Kurosawa expertly moves the action from the back of the screen to the front or from the far side to the near side, giving the audience a raw sense of the action approaching.
Another aspect of beauty with The Hidden Fortress comes with the use of Kurosawa’s quick editing techniques. Action sequences are done with succinct cuts and slices, making things move fast and clean on the screen. When the General fights four soldiers on a charge through the forest back to the headquarters of the villains, Kurosawa moves the camera and the film at a rapid yet gentle pace and allows the action to work as the chase works. With this frenetic energy, Kurosawa’s quick edits come more forcefully into play as faces gleam in and out and the General chases the villains down. Another example of this comes with the brilliant spear fight later in the same portion of the film.
The Hidden Fortress delves into Kurosawa’s normative moral questions, putting human beings in constant conflict with fate. The imagery within the film depicts mankind as being slaves to fate or pawns in a giant chess game of life. This gives what would seem, on the surface at least, to be a normal adventure film a gracious quality of life-affirming passion. Kurosawa’s film moves and breathes on the screen, but it’s also a wonderfully vibrant fun adventure. The characters are rich and bold, giving engaging life to the action around them. Even the scoundrel farmers have a quality of life to them that reflects in their shattering and hilarious greed. As they chase down lost fragments of gold, putting lives at risk, one can’t help but want to scold them.
The Hidden Fortress is so much more than just an inspiration for Star Wars and George Lucas. On the lovely Criterion Collection DVD, Lucas appears in an introduction and ventures to distance himself from the more direct influences. This does the film and Kurosawa great favour and shows the type of honour among thieves that the two shared. With trailblazing sensibility for the screen, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress functions as another masterpiece from this bold and brilliant talent.
10/10
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