My absolute favourite movie of all times. It’s a masterpiece, one of the greatest films ever made, starring the great Toshiro Mifune (left) with whom Kurosawa went on to make many more movies which all became classics of the Samurai Movie genre. George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve, John Woo and Wes Anderson cite the movie as having great influence on their work.

Many people will show you the battle scenes or the incredible long shots Kurosawa created, but my picture here is a screenshot of my favourite scene: Kikuchiyo (on the left) one of the seven Samurai is a shrewd individual. When the village is besieged by bandits, he sneaks out into the woods. Because he is the son of a farmer and as unrefined as the bandits, he goes up to one from behind sits down next to him and starts talking about the damn villagers and how everything is wrong since the samurai attacked and burnt down the bandits hideout and now it’s they who’re starving instead of the villagers. All the while the bandit doesn’t realise he’s not talking to one of his fellows, even lets Kikuchiyo inspect his rifle. Then our shrewd hero draws his sword and looks at it, the bandit looks too and this is the scene only half a second before the bandit realises that the guy next to him is not one of his fellows and is going to kill him while a smile sloooooowly creeps onto the face of the samurai.

And the entire scene may not be as impressive as other scenes, but it is so incredibly well crafted, well acted and the way Kurosawa frames these two from slightly below and the gleam of the blade… I just love it so much.