Akira Kurosawa likes to employ his stock actors, and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS is no exception. The film stars the great Toshiro Mifune (Japan’s equivalent of Sir Laurence Olivier,) as General Rokurota. Misa (KAMIKAZI) Uehara plays the tomboyish Princess Yukihime. Takashi (GHIDRAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER) Shimura plays Mifune’s opponent, General Nagakora. Minoru (GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER) Chiaki is greedy peasant Tahei. His bickering ally is fellow gold-digger, Matakishi, played by Kamatari (RAZOR:SWORD OF JUSTICE) Fujiwara.

In nineteenth century Japan, two greedy peasants, Tahei (Chiaki) and Matakishi (Fujiwara) witness the killing of a samurai warrior. The killers on horseback are guards for an unfriendly army that now controls the territory. This territory was previously controlled by Princess Yuki; but the rival army usurped her position, and subjected her people to slavery. The Princess has since disappeared, and she is now wanted as a criminal. The army has setup a blockade so that no one can escape the territory. Tahei and Matakishi are captured at the blockade and thrown into a slave camp.

Their imprisonment is short-lived, however. A slave revolt erupts with a massive slave horde overpowering their gun-wielding captors. Tahei and Matakishi escape into the wilderness. As they gather firewood, they discover a piece of wood than contains gold inside it. As they bicker for ownership of the gold, the mysterious General Rokurota makes his presence known. The high-ranking General Rokurota is actually undercover as a peasant. He is a sworn guardian for Princess Yuki, and offers Tahei and Matakishi a chance to earn some gold if they help him smuggle Princess Yuki’s cache of gold through enemy territory. Tahei and Matakishi are only too happy to accompany General Rokurota to a hidden mountain retreat where Princess Yuki and her advisors reside.

General Rokutora plans on transporting the large cache of gold by inserting it inside wooden sticks. Tahei and Matakishi round up some horses, and together with Rokurota and the undercover Princess Yuki (they think she is a deaf mute), they mount the gold-filled sticks on horseback, and leave the territory. The opposing army is aware of this contingent, and even goes so far as to set fire to Princess Yuki’s hidden retreat in the mountains. The army then closes in our band of heroes, and they must constantly use their wits to evade capture. Finally, General Rokurota is captured and must face the leader of the army, General Nagakora. Rokutora and Nagakora know each other well, from previous alliances. However, Rokutora must fight his former ally to earn his freedom. They duel with staffs, and Rokutora ends up winning, thereby gaining his freedom.

Rokutora rejoins his comrades Tahei, Matakishi, and Princess Yuki, who are now joined by an abused slave girl. There is a big ceremony thrown by the villagers called a Fire Festival. Rokutora’s group joins this environmental celebration, and it provides them an opportunity to hide from their enemies. Unfortunately, Rokutora and Princess Yuki are captured by General Nagakora’s men. Tahei and Matakishi get away, but somehow those two bickering peasants must find a way to free their friends and escape with the gold.

The story is told from the perspective of the two peasants, Tahei and Matakishi. They are corralled into a scheme to smuggle a fugitive princess and her cache of gold back to her homeland. Tahei and Matakishi are engaging in their simplicity and greed. They veer back and forth between camaraderie and back-stabbing, swaggering and cringing with a constant strain of venality and cowardice throughout. They are hilarious foils to the noble General Rokutora and the proud, headstrong princess. THE HIDDEN FORTRESS relies very little on spectacular action, and builds excitement in an intellectual way as the heroes use their brains to stay one step ahead of the enemy. The tension comes from not knowing whether our heroes will be captured.

THE HIDDEN FORTRESS vividly depicts feudal Japan with the intricate sets and production design. This also marks the first time Kurosawa uses a wide-angle camera which allows him to turn the screen into a sweeping canvas big enough for his epic vision. During the slave revolt scene, hundreds of slaves pour into the cinematography. In other scenes, Kurosawa just uses his widescreen techniques to photograph an empty landscape of sand, plains, and rocks for dramatic effect. Kurosawa always depicts the Earth and elements as important characters in his films, and this one is no different.

Kurosawa’s script and direction are tight as usual. He combines all the elements of the classic samurai adventure film, including a large scale slave rebellion, daring escapes, dangerous duels, awe-inspiring landscapes and bawdy humor. The slave revolt is epic in scope and is reminiscent of THE SEVEN SAMURAI and RAN. Though Kurosawa holds in high regard the chambara (swordplay) films, he tried hard to break conventions and push the envelope in other directions with THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. For instance, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS features one of the first performances of an aggressive female central character (Princess Yuki) in Japan. This is especially interesting considering that the equality movement in Japan is years behind the U.S.

Kurosawa crafted some memorable and ground-breaking characters, and the cast rose to the occasion. Misa Euhara is superb as the humane and headstrong Princess Yuki. Minoru Chiaki, and Kamatari Fujiwara (as Tahei and Matakishi, respectively) are perfect as the always-bickering, greedy thieves. What can you say about Kurosawa main-man Toshiro Mifune? The man has genuine screen presence, unlimited acting ability, and a truly amazing voice. His talents are crucial to the role of General Rokutora, a man of standing who must pretend to be a commoner to perform his duty and save his princess. Even the roles that Mifune plays where his characters are not of highest morale fiber, he still manages to give his characters a sense of nobility.

SIGHT
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS was Kurosawa’s first film to use widescreen cinematography (actually, the first film in Japan to employ 2.35.1). Kurosawa takes full advantage of the unrestricted compositions. For the first time, the cinematography is as epic as Kurosawa’s visions. One has to wonder how THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THRONE OF BLOOD would have looked had they been filmed in glorious Tohoscope. Considering the age of the elements, this DVD faithfully recreates the epic scope of THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. The transfer has it’s share of scratches, speckles, and grain, but no where near as much as I expected. The anomalies in the picture are attributable to the film’s age and the technical limitations of the time. But this is a big step up from Mei Ah’s THRONE OF BLOOD DVD. The transfer is very sharp and full of detail. The deep, dark black level results in a balanced black & white transfer with no grayish hues (or any other colors) creeping into the image. Kurosawa uses his trademark atmospheric photography including fog dissolves, deep focus camera techniques, and precision framing. He likes to capture rich production design (especially the massive staircases) and sweeping action sequences (such as the slave revolt scene) into the visuals. All of this is nicely captured in the transfer with lots of detail. The costume design is just as finally executed (and detailed) as the production design. Also, Kurosawa’s exterior scenes of the Japanese countryside are flawlessly recreated on this DVD. The subtitles are not burned into the image; they are extremely easy to read underneath the black bar. The only problem with the subtitles is the actual translation errors (such as ‘corpses’ spelled as ‘cropses’). Overall, Kurosawa’s amazing cinematography is faithfully rendered.

SOUND
From a setup menu, you can select Dolby Digital Mono or Dolby Digital 5.1. This is not your normal 5.1 track. What they have done is created some light rear sound field ambiance that reverberates the front mono sound field. It’s more like they routed the mono signal to the front and rear speakers, but it actually sounds better than this description, while keeping true to the original mono signal. This DD 5.1 has no panning activity, no loudness, and no bass. The sound is very clear and narotal. The dialog and sound effects still emanate from the center channel. The DD 5.1 effects (if you can call them that) echo the hoofbeats, gunfire, and music cues. The Japanese dialog is full of character (especially Toshiro Mifune’s excellent, controlled voice) and the dialog is perfectly depicted in the mix. There is a long musical scene involving a Fire Festival which benefits from the DD 5.1 sound. Maestro Masaru Sato, one Japan’s greatest composers, provides Japanese traditional Noh music including some marvelous flute playing and primeval drumming. It sounds good even though it is not true stereo fidelity. There is a trade-off here on the DD 5.1 mix. Though both the DD Mono and DD 5.1 are crisp and free from distortion, there is a small layer of background noise heard throughout (but not nearly enough to affect the viewing experience). These problems are from the source elements, and not faulty DVD mastering. Overall, I felt the DD 5.1 soundtrack was so restrained that it was like listening to regular mono mix anyway, so I think purists will like it. But the ambiance really adds to the overall Kurosawa experience.

FEATURES
The only extra is an Akira Kurosawa biography/filmography (in English) called THE GREATEST DIRECTOR OF JAPAN: AKIRA KUROSAWA.

CONCLUSION
Overshadowed by bigger efforts like THE SEVEN SAMURAI, its nature distorted by its status as the official inspiration for STAR WARS, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS is a unique delight in the Kurosawa canon, balancing wry humor and deep empathy on the line between realism and fairy tale. Those who think that Kurosawa could only direct dramatic films need to see THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. It is an exiting, funny, and extremely entertaining adventure film. Mandatory viewing, for sure. Mei Ah’s affordable Region 0 DVD contains a nice transfer and a remixed soundtrack to keep purists and home theater nuts happy. For those who don’t want to wait for Criterion, this is a safe bet for the price.

The latter of these complaints was generally attached to 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 Japan. 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 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 bold themes about heroism and sacrifice and tell them with the kind of visual audacity that elevated the material above its roots.

A perfect example of this is Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress, 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 brave samurai general named Rokurota Makabe (played by Kurosawa's favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune), 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.

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 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 humanistic 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).

One thing that has always set Kurosawa's action epics apart from so many others is his humanism, his ability to draw out the recognizably humane elements in all his characters, no matter how minor. Note, for example, in The Hidden Fortress, how Kurosawa 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 be lifted right out of a Western.

The Hidden Fortress was one of the most expensive films made in postwar Japan and also the first to use the CinemaScope widescreen process, and Kurosawa makes great use of all the tools 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 depth of the screen to emphasize this repeatedly.

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). Yet, to speak of this grand piece of entertainment as "minor Kurosawa" speaks less about the status of the film than it does about the greatness of its director.