The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
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What critics compared The Hidden Fortress to
Star Wars borrows from numerous sources, but the most obvious inspirations are the serialized adventures of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Arthurian legends, Greek mythology, and Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress .
Now, add to this myth business the fact that Lucas borrowed his plot for "Star Wars" from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa´s "The Hidden Fortress," 1958, and we can see that his sci-fi epic has more to it than meets the eye.
As I'm sure we're all aware by now, Star Wars is really just a remake of Kurosawa Akira's 1958 jidaigeki adventure The Hidden Fortress , seasoned with elements of the old Flash Gordon serial, but that's in and of itself the dream project of an unapologetic film buff.
When they wander the sandy surfaces of Luke Skywalker's planet, in scenes suggested by the comic wrangles of Minoro Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara in Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress," the movie's special charm is in full gear.
No one ever figured out the plot was stolen from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" until it didn't matter.
The director takes Luke into territory just about no one saw coming, making him a lone samurai full of heartache and regret more akin to heroes in Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo or Kagemusha than he is the dashing young champion of something like The Hidden Fortress .
There’s Kurosawa in it, both the rowdy fabulism of The Hidden Fortress and the impressionist choreography of Ran , a sword fight in a scarlet throne room that draws on Powell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffman , even an overt nod to Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch .
(All very fitting since, after all, “A New Hope” is a loose remake of Kurosawa's “The Hidden Fortress.”)
The slug and his snail sidekick seemed familiar types at first, kinda like the feuding idiots in Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress," that is, the inspirations for a couple of 'droids in " Star Wars ."
It drew on classic films as serious as John Ford’s “The Searchers” and Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress.”
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Most great filmmakers assume a darker vision as they grow older -- and in "Ran," Kurosawa deliberately avoids the churning immediacy and energy of movies such as "Rashomon" or "The Hidden Fortress."
In this, incidentally, it also resembles Star Wars, which counts Flash Gordon and Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress among its influences.
It has about it the bittersweetness of the ending to Modern Times.
A somewhat lighter, more action-oriented spin on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Hidden Fortress explores a dichotomy of the idiocy of greed and the rewards of sacrifice.