14. Akira Kurosawa changed American film without ever making an American film
The 1960s film epic The Magnificent Seven (not its execrable remake of 2016) remains one of the most beloved and admired films ever made. Its soundtrack and theme music are iconic, its storyline remains timeless, and it has been emulated by filmmakers since it first appeared. It presents a tale believed to be American to the core, a collection of unrelated drifters with a casual regard for law and order banding together to correct an injustice, at first for profit, and later for justice’s sake. Its premise has been repeated time and again ever since, and it is widely regarded as a quintessential Western film, as well as one of the greatest of all American films. Yet it is based on a film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, The Seven Samurai, and though Kurosawa’s influence is well-known, few have seen his masterpiece, nor recognize his influence.
By changing the American West, and through his influence on other film genres, Kurosawa changed history. Few acknowledge the Japanese cultural influence on the Star Wars series of films and the universe they have created, but they were in part based on another work by Kurosawa, The Hidden Fortress. The Star Wars entry The Phantom Menace originally was envisioned by George Lucas as one very similar to that of Kurosawa’s earlier (1958) work. Kurosawa has been praised (and emulated) by directors including Frances Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and many more, all of whom at times copied his style and techniques in their films, sharing Kurosawa’s skills and cinematic vision with the western world.