The story follows two greedy peasants in feudal Japan, Tahei and Matashichi, who are returning home from a failed attempt to profit from a war between neighboring clans. En Route they encounter the remnants of the defeated tribe that consists, most notably, of a famous General and a Princess who are hiding out in a fortress in the mountains. General Rokurota Makabe and Princess Yuki need to escape into allied territory with their large supply of gold so that they can rebuild their shattered clan. To do this the Peasants are tricked into helping them, with the promise that they will receive a large share of the gold when the destination is reached. Along the way, the General's prowess is put to the test as he must guide the 4, and later 5 with the inclusion of a freed slave, through close encounters with the pursuing enemy, and out of difficult situations the bumbling peasants manage to get them into.

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for The Hidden Fortress (1958) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Toshirō Mifune, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Misa Uehara, Susumu Fujita, Takashi Shimura DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Yamasaki MUSIC: Masaru Satō PRODUCTION: TOHO

Box Office Performance

The Hidden Fortress earned $46,808 domestically and $10,865 internationally, for a worldwide total of $57,673. The film skewed heavily domestic (81%), suggesting strong North American appeal.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

The Hidden Fortress was Kurosawa's first feature filmed in a widescreen format, Tohoscope, which he continued to use for the next decade. The film was originally presented with Perspecta directional sound, which was re-created for the Criterion Blu-ray release.

Key parts of the film were shot in Hōrai Valley in Hyōgo and on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, where bad weather from the record-breaking Kanagawa typhoon delayed the production. Toho's frustration with Kurosawa's slow pace of shooting led to the director forming his own production company the following year, though he continued to distribute through Toho.

▸ Music & Score

The film's musical score was composed by Masaru Sato. The soundtrack album comprises 65 tracks.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 4 wins & 1 nomination total

Awards Won: ★ Silver Bear for Best Director (9th Berlin International Film Festival) ★ FIPRESCI Prize at Berlinale (9th Berlin International Film Festival)

CRITICAL RECEPTION

In a 1957 review, Variety called it "a long, interesting, humour-laden picture in medieval Japan". Performances of the lead actors, Kurosawa's direction and Ichio Yamazaki's camerawork were praised.

An article published in The New York Times on January 24, 1962, featured a review of the film by journalist Bosley Crowther, who called The Hidden Fortress a superficial film. He said that Kurosawa, "the Japanese director whose cinema skills have been impressed upon us in many pictures, beginning with "Rashomon", is obviously not above pulling a little wool over his audiences' eyes — a little stooping to Hollywoodisms — in order to make a lively film." Crowther further opined that "Kurosawa, for all his talent, is as prone to pot boiling as anyone else."

Writing for The Criterion Collection in 1987, David Ehrenstein called it "one of the greatest action-adventure films ever made" and a "fast-paced, witty and visually stunning" samurai film. According to Ehrenstein: The battle on the steps in Chapter 2 (anticipating the climax of Ran) is as visually overwhelming as any of the similar scenes in Griffith's Intolerance. The use of composition in depth in the fortress scene in Chapter 4 is likewise as arresting as the best of Eisenstein or David Lean. Toshiro Mifune's muscular demonstrations of heroic derring-do in the horse-charge scene (Chapter 11) and the scrupulously choreographed spear duel that follows it (Chapter 12) is in the finest tradition of Douglas Fairbanks. Overall, there’s a sense of sheer "movieness" to The Hidden Fortress that places it plainly in the ranks of such grand adventure entertainments as Gunga Din, The Thief of Baghdad, and Fritz Lang's celebrated diptych The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Hindu Tomb.

Writing for The Criterion Collection in 2001, Armond White said "The Hidden Fortress holds a place in cinema history comparable to John Ford's Stagecoach: It lays out the plot and characters of an on-the-road epic of self-discovery and heroic action.