Masaki Kobayashi more than proves his worth as a filmmaker here (though he more than proved his worth with The Human Condition and Harakiri, this is the one most seen abroad), in this tragic, technically amazing film Samurai Rebellion. It's got a misleading cover, however, with Toshirio Mifune's face mad as hell all covered in blood. True, the last quarter of the picture does have a kind of cathartic release of swordplay action and (more than usual for the period) bloodshed. But for the most part this is really a film squarely about its characters, and an incredibly interesting one on both thematic and pure cinematic scales.
It's got an excellent, subtle screenplay by Kurosawa regular Hashimoto, and it could be said that that last quarter, of which is one of the most violent I have seen from various 60s black & white samurai movies, is 2nd only to Kurosawa in this regard. Samurai Rebellion stands on its own as a great film in that it gives Mifune, as well as actors Tatsuya Nakadai, Takeshi Kato, and especially Yoko Tsukasa as Ichi, very memorable parts. It's got even an existential side to it that reminds one of Kurosawa as well, though it fits into a mode that is both formal, but also breaking a mold as well. By the time Samurai Rebellion came out, films like this in black and white were on their way out.
With this Kobayashi and his DP Kazuo Yamada create countlessly indelible images in the jidai-geki genre (or Chambara film). One I still remember is when Ichi is describing what happened for her to have to leave the Lord at the start, when she had her fight with another mistress and even slapped around the Lord. The close-ups close in with a true intensity, and the editing adds a kind of uniqueness in a flashback that adds to it being such a rotten memory. Overall, it is both Kobayashi's skills with the lens, that lending itself to his gifts as a storyteller, and allowing people like Mifune and Nakadai to really give it all to these characters that makes it stand apart from the countless other films.
Mifune in-particular here is at the top of his game; here is a character that isn't as immediately humorous or wild as in some of Kurosawa's films. Here is more reserved at first, more in line with someone in his position at his middle age. But the character of Isaburo Sasahara also speaks to his real gifts at hitting the nerves of the one he's inhabiting, and with this one it's a character who's been too stuffed away, too "henpecked" as some characters observe. It's not too surprising then that his sort of eruption late in the film (not only the inspiration for the cover, but also for Paul Schrader's climax for Taxi Driver) after other tragedies have occurred adds to it all. It's really one of his very best performances.
Samurai Rebellion also tries to look deeper into something that must have been common as day in Japan, though here in America it seems like its so unnerving. The power of the Lord over the vassals, and how the powerless seem to stay so until there's something to push them over the edge. It's theme of love's strengths and real connection over dominant rule- and really deeper choice over un-wavering rule- guides through the film as it seems to start out fairly simply. This might all sound a little preachy for a film that should just be, to some, a spectacle of swords being brandished for terms of loyalty and revenge and such.
It's that, too, but it's more if you get into the psychology of this assorted lot of characters, and the style compliments that completely. It's not a color film, but it still feels incredibly contemporary in a way, and as someone watching the film almost forty years after it was released it doesn't feel hokey or stilted like some other older samurai movies. It's touching, creative, and quite the excellent show if you know what you're getting.
