Akira Kurosawa’s tale of ascetic mercenaries brought together for a single job inspired endless imitations, but the original has lost none of its magic

While researching samurai history for an Akira Kurosawa film project in the early 1950s, producer Sojiro Motoki discovered references to masterless warriors, or ronin, defending villages from marauders in 16th-century Japan. Movie history was made. Kurosawa and his co-writers Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni created an epic primal myth which has pulsated in cinema ever since, through the genres of westerns, war movies and crime dramas: the crew of ascetic, unsentimental but uncynical freelance mercenaries, brought together for a single job, taking pity on the desperate civilians who have nothing to offer but gratitude. They also see that there is a nobility and purity in this all-but-lost cause, which will refine their martial vocation as nothing else would.

Having been inspired by Hollywood westerns, Kurosawa saw his own film remade as The Magnificent Seven, going on to inspire films from The Dirty Dozen to Ocean’s Eleven; it was originally six samurai, but like Ingmar Bergman and Walt Disney, Kurosawa was to see the totemic power of seven. Takashi Shimura plays the samurais’ middle-aged leader Kambei: drily humorous, calm, experienced and wise: we see him shaving his head at the very beginning, posing as a monk to rescue a baby from a thief (again, a desperately dangerous task for negligible pay) – and for the rest of the movie, Kambei distractedly runs his fingers over his stubbly scalp, unused to it. With this mannerism, Shimura and Kurosawa show us Kambei coming to terms with his monkish destiny: this is surely to be his last mission and, like an artist, he wants it to be his masterpiece.

Seven Samurai is released on 29 October in cinemas.