Factual error: Toshiro Mifune's character, Kikuchiyo, travels to the bandits' camp and steals one of their two remaining fuselock muskets. Shortly afterward, the bandits fire twice at the samurai within five seconds with their last firearm. A fuselock takes as much as two minutes to reload, prime, and fire.
Seven Samurai (1954)
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki
Visible crew/equipment: When the samurai are giving battle advice to the peasants, who sit around them forming a circle, the camera does a rather wide circle shot of them. You can see the camera track for the shot in most of scene behind the sitting peasants.
Continuity mistake: Shichiroji throws a spear out the door of Rikichi's hut in anger, it lands obviously in parallel with the door. Later, after Kikuchiyo's outburst he runs outside and picks the spear up, however it's now laying sideways compared to the door.
Trivia: In some instances in the film, such as when Gorobei kills the bandit who was checking the water level with an arrow, the actors were actually shot with real arrows. The actor would simply wear a block of wood under his costume (which you can see if you know what to look for) and an expert archer would actually shoot him.
Trivia: Right after the battle scene where Kambei kills a bandit with a high stance strike, there's a shot of a bandit being swamped by peasant militia. Pay attention to another bandit riding up into this shot in the upper left corner. There's an unsuspecting extra who is standing right in the path of the second bandit's horse. The horse rams the extra, violently throwing him to the ground. (02:46:40)
Trivia: Seiji Miyaguchi, who plays Kyuzo the master swordsman, actually had the least experience with swordplay among all of the actors who play samurai in the film. In fact, he never even touched a sword until a few weeks before shooting the film (he initially turned the role down for this reason). Most of his fight scenes rely on clever editing to make him appear to be a master.
Kikuchiyo: This baby... It's me... It's what happened to me.
Gisaku: Find hungry samurai. Even bears come down from the mountains when they are hungry.
Kambei Shimada: Danger always strikes when everything seems fine.
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