Vendetta of a Samurai (1952)

Vendetta of a Samurai (Araki Mataemon: Kettô kagiya no tsuji)
Directed by Kazuo Mori
Written by Akira Kurosawa
1952/Japan
Daiei Studios/Toho Company
First viewing/Hulu

[box] If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. — Sun Tsu[/box]

Despite the muddled filmmaking in the first half, this one builds to a devastating climax.

I can give only the merest outline of the complicated story and am not sure I’m getting even that right.  It does not help that the IMDb page does not show most of the character names.  Anyway, expert swordsman Mataemon (Toshiro MIfune) is the retainer of a young noble who is seeking vengeance against the killer of a family member.  The movie begins with an epic swordfight in which Mataemon, almost single handed, wipes out dozens of the bad guys.  The fighting seems unbelievably phony and soon we learn that the film is showing the legend but will now proceed to show what really happened.

Mataemon is the best friend of Jinza (Takashi Shimura) who is a retainer of the enemy of Mataemon’s boss.  They have a somber meeting in which they recognize that they will soon be bound by duty to try to kill each other.  Each takes his fate philosophically.

We then move on to a long sequence in which Mataemon and his men are waiting in a humble inn for their rivals to pass through town.  This begins a confusing sequence of flashbacks intercut with Mataemon’s attendants shivering with fear in the inn.  The movie ends with a sword fight in which no one covers himself with glory.  This sword fight made the rest of the film worth seeing for me.

The screenplay was written by Akira Kurosawa and I think he would have made a much better film out of it.  The story tries to explore the difference between legend and reality but gets lost in the overlapping flashbacks.  The visuals aren’t very striking either.  But the fine actors – many of the supporting players as well as the leads would reappear in The Seven Samurai – pack some powerful emotion into the final confrontation.  I was really moved by it, particularly Mifune’s face off against Shimura.