Description: Hiroshi Inagaki's acclaimed Samurai Trilogy is based on the novel that has been called Japan's Gone with the Wind. This sweeping saga of the legendary seventeenth-century samurai Musashi Miyamoto (powerfully portrayed by Toshiro Mifune) plays out against the turmoil of a devastating civil war. The Trilogy follows Musashi's odyssey from unruly youth to enlightened warrior. In the first part, Musashi Miyamoto, the hero's dreams of military glory end in betrayal, defeat, and a fugitive lifestyle. But he is saved by a woman who loves him and a cunning priest who guides him to the samurai path. This installment won the 1955 Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film.
Amazon.com: Toshirô Mifune defines the quintessential samurai in Hiroshi Inagaki's 1954 Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, the first feature in a trilogy based on the epic novel by Eiji Yoshikawa. As in Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai, which appeared the same year, Mifune plays a brash and ambitious peasant who desires fame and power as a swordsman. His dreams of glory in war sour when his army is routed and he becomes hunted by the authorities, but the "tough love" attentions of a kindly but severe monk help him develop from a hot-tempered outlaw to a thoughtful swordsman. Inagaki's somber color epic is very different from the energetic action of Kurosawa's films. The sword fights and battles are practically theatrical in their presentation, staged in long takes that emphasize form and movement over flash and flamboyance. Mifune brings a sad, almost tragic quality to the samurai warrior Musashi Miyamoto, whose dedication proscribes him to a lonely life on the road. Though the film stands well on its own, its stature takes on greater significance as the first act of Inagaki's stately, contemplative epic of the professional and spiritual development of Musashi, whose training and adventures continue in Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple. --Sean Axmaker
The First Of Director Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy! "Samurai I," starring Toshiro Mifune as first Takezo, then Miyamoto Musashi, is an excellent film into the trilogy which will conclude with the final, and best episode, "Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island." In this first film, Takezo (Toshiro Mifune) as he is known in the begining, [but will later be named Miyamoto Musashi], is a brash young man. As a peasant, he decides to leave his village and enter the army, which is on its way to do battle. However, he becomes despondent when his side is defeated. As he returns to his village, he has become an outcast, and when arrested for treason, he is saved by a monk from death, who tells Takezo to study the samurai code. When looking back on the episode, I realize that director Inagaki did a very good job with his plot development, as we see a brash and abrasive Takezo's fall from his lofty ambitions in the begining, to eventually emerge as a true samurai, due to the intervention of the priest Takuan.
It is the teachings of this priest that will set Takezo on the right path in life. Yet, Takezo must face many obstacles: most of which are of his own making, and of his inner self. His development into the samurai he wishes to be, and the samurai he eventually becomes is due to the efforts of the priest Takuan. From an irrational and wild young man, Takezo will some day emerge into a samurai who can hold his head up high. In the meantime, however, he aspires to be a great samurai. The character development that Hiroshi Inagaki gives to the characters in the film are very good. Otsu (Kaoru Yachigusa), who becomes loyal to Takezo, and eventually frees him and flees with him, will become central to the films plot, and her role will continue until the final episode.
However, this is a Toshiro Mifune film. Albeit, with great characters in the film itself, his character and changing nature is the heart of the films trilogy. However, I really liked the character of the priest Takuan. This first film of the trilogy allows the viewer to understand how and why Takezo is the way he is. Where he comes from in his life, and why he aspires to be a great samurai. The film succeeds in large part due to the rough hewn nature of the samurai during the Tokugawa period. The film is not complete, in that the viewer must see the changes that Takezo [later Miyamoto Musashi] must undergo in order for the film to make full sense. I recommend that you watch all three episodes before coming to any conclusions in this first installment. The questions are all answered in the films trilogy in the climatic and suspenseful final episode. This is well worth viewing, and owning. I recommend the film highly, and add that if you stick with the first two installments, and see the final episode you will not be disappointed. Highly recommended.
Alright Japanese action flick from the '50s The always-reliable Toshiro Mifune plays a wild young man with a strong urge to go off and fight in a local civil war. He goes, the war doesn't turn out well, and the young man Takezo (the Mifune character) ventured off with takes up with a prairie floozy and her beautiful daughter and promptly forgets all about the girl he left behind. Takezo doesn't, though, and when he returns to the village to tell Otsu of the betrayal by some prestidigitation or other he finds himself hunted by the villagers on trumped up charges of treason and proceed to hunt our young hero like a swamp dog.
Then or thereabouts a Buddhist priest enters the story and becomes the pivot point in the first installment in an epic trilogy. Will the priest prove able to break Takezo's stubborn willfulness without breaking his spirit? MIYAMOTO MUSASHI is released by Criterion and won an honorary, foreign language Academy Award in 1955. That's a pretty potent combination that's hard to resist, and I stuck this one in the player figuring maybe it is, as some have claimed, the Japanese `Gone With the Wind.'
Then I remembered I'm not all that partial to GWTW, either. Well, the `either' came after I watched MM and decided its `classic' elements eluded me. For one thing, its afflicted with first-installment-itis - it takes a whole long time for the plot to pick up momentum, and the ending has the always frustrating `to be continued' written all over it. Not only is it somewhat slow and choppy and inconclusive, its centerpiece - a climatic battle between Takezo and a forest full of angry men with long, pointy sticks - is a fizzle. It either wasn't choreographed well before filming, or the editors botched it in the cutting room, or the director didn't film enough footage for the editor to use in the first place. In any event, what ought to be a stirring, pitched battle is nothing much more than Toshiro Mifune hopping and snarling and spitting at a herd of extras who don't come within fifteen feet of him.
MIYAMOTO MUSASHI was good enough for me to recommend, just, and intriguing enough to line up a viewing of the final two installments. Kind of a mucky, dirty, hard-to-read print as well.
Pretty good, not great It is easy to overrate certain films, and this is one of them. Certain films, like this one, have a lot of status for some reason. This is not a great film. The story isn't absorbing enough. There are some other faults as well.
The battle scenes are unbelievable. A number of times we have one solitary fighter, either Takezo or his friend, beating off a large number of attackers. The way this is accomplished is by showing the hero spinning around, and every time he swings his sword, someone else falls. It is absurd. The men fell, in turn, because the script told them to. There is no realism in any of the battle scenes.
We also don't understand why the characters behave as they do. We just have to chalk it up to Japanese culture, or whatever. They make no sense as real people. Why did the priest treat Takezo as he did? Ya got me! Why did Takezo make the final decision he made? Ya got me again. I don't feel it.
In one scene, darling Otsu tells Takezo to wait for him, and she disappears to change her clothes. Obviously he was going to walk out on her. I thought Otsu was an absolute idiot for walking away to change her clothes, after begging him to let her accompany him. Do you think he stayed and waited for her? How foolish was that scene.
It is a fairly absorbing story, but not nearly as absorbing as the book Musashi. I can't give this film more than 3 stars.
One thing that annoys me in Amazon reviews is how often people say "the movie was great but the dvd was bad". It is a cliche already. Rate the movie. When you are talking about a classic like this one, the only permissible way to criticize it is by saying the movie is great but the dvd is bad. Well, this movie isn't great. It's pretty good. That's it.
Part 1 of Mifune's Great Samurai Trilogy Often called a "Japanese 'Gone With the Wind,'" Hiroshi Inagaki's beautiful trilogy follows the story of the legendary real-life samurai Musashi Miyamoto (played by the almost-always amazing Toshiro Mifune) on his journey from being a rebellious young man to becoming a masterful warrior. I find it difficult to separate these three films (parts 1-3) in terms of individual merit. By watching all three films the end result is greater than the sum total of each part. Criterion offers each film separately or together in a boxed set. The first film, titled Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto introduces the viewer to Musashi who begins his long journey be becoming a fugitive in his home land. Along the way, he is saved by and later falls in love with the beautiful Otsu and is befriended by a priest who becomes his mentor and teaches him the way of the samurai. It is also worth noting that this first volume received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1955. On the downside, the entire trilogy is skimpy in special features (there are no audio commentaries and the inner booklet is rather insubstantial compared to subsequent Criterion Collection releases). However, no amount of extra features can redeem a truly aweful movie, and a lack of extra features cannot take aware from a truly great movie.
An interesting film for Criterion to release This film (which won an Oscar® in 1955 for best foreign language film) is the first part of a trilogy which is known as the Samurai Trilogy. I find it very impressive for a color film to be released in 1954 at a time where even most American films were still in B&W. At this time, color films were still far more expensive than B&W and Japan was not yet even close to becoming the tech savvy country it is known for being today.
The film itself is based loosely on the true story of 17th century Japanese samurai Musashi Miyamoto. He was considered a hero by the Japanese though I disagree because he participated in the massacre of a Japanese Christian community in Kyushu.
The films have been likened to a Japanese equivalant of "Gone with the Wind" as it is of a woman torn between two lovers during a civil war.
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