Jean de Florette (1986)
(film 120 minutes)
Manon des Sources (1986)
(film 113 minutes)

Directed by: Claude Berrie
Language: French

Rating: 7/10 | Yaser Tohidi
April 05, 2020

A drama is filmed in two parts. The story in the first part is developed around a water resource, a spring, and the relation of two neighbors together and in relation to that spring, one rich and experienced who wants the spring and its land even by committing crime and the other new and poor but full of ambition and theoretical knowledge who just want to have a good relation with his neighbor and nature around and a good life for his family. The new neighbor is Jean de Florette, a hunchback, and his wife and daughter. The old neighbor is Cesar Soubeyran and his nephew Ugolin. Cesar and Ugolin conceal the spring and hide its location from Florette family and this makes them suffer a lot to supply water to their land. Jean finally dies as a consequence of his efforts to find the spring and Soubeyran family buys their field and they immediately start to open the spring.
In the second part, the story is extended to the whole village. Manon, the daughter of the hunchback, realizes all the truth and more than that, she realizes that many in the village knew the existence of the spring but they also hide this fact because they didn’t want a hunchback, a bad fate, to be in their village. She accidentally finds the water source of the whole village. She cuts off the source. This is a disaster for the village. This makes the village agitated to find the reason and they find no shelter but in the church. Priest points to the existence of a criminal and Manon presents actually two criminals, Cesar and Ugolin. Ugolin commits a suicide as he finds out his love to Manon is one-sided and leaves his farm to Manon, the farm that they bought from her father Jean, the hunchback. Manon opens the water source. Meanwhile, Cesar realizes that Jean was his own son from his short but deep relation with Florette before he joins the French army in Africa. Also, Cesar leaves all of his property for Manon, his one and only granddaughter. 
The Movie creates a drama spanning between generations connected by water and land. The love to land and family bring immoralities and crime. However, the justice will prevail even though after many years. The movie, from the beginning, creates characters of Soubeyran and Florette families and in the second part, extends to the whole village and villagers. This extension of the story makes the second part much more entertaining to watch. Thanks to the plans taken in the village and farm lands and nature around, and the story behind, the village becomes familiar to the viewers’ eyes and remains into memories. Several villagers becomes a character; the mayor, the farmer who wants his water for which he paid, the village’s spokesman, etc. 

Despite the great pictures during the two episodes, the movie, however, suffers from poor mise en scène in some sequences for example the explosion and hunchback’s death due to that and Cesar’s death which are hard to believe. Just compare these two deaths with Ugolin’s which is perfectly convincing.

Click here for wikipedia page
Click here for wikipedia page

Seven Samurai (1954)
(207 minutes with intermission)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese

Rating: 10/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 15, 2020

To defend their village against an imminent attack by bandits, villagers decide to hire samurai. A group of seniors go to the city and luckily find a talented samurai who not only accepts the mission despite the low pay-off but also arranges further search for more samurai. A group of seven forms and enters the village. They plan the defense using also the villagers. Finally, the attack starts and the bandits are faced with strong defense by the village. Samurai and the villagers succeed to kill all the bandits although they loss some lives including four of the samurai. 
This is the simple story based upon which Seven Samurai is written. But the movie goes much deeper into the relations and life of villagers and samurai. The movie starts by showing the vulnerability of farmers to the attacks from bandits. They have bad memories of brutalities also from samurai. They have no protection against these. But there might still be some noble samurai, and this forms their only hope for living. In the search for samurai and after having little success initially, they come across a strange scene; a senior samurai, Kambei, dresses up as a monk and shaves his head to save a child from the hands of a kidnapper. He shows a great talent by saving the child with bare hands but above that he proves that noble samurai still exist. Kambei might accept this difficult mission for only a handful of rice every day. Villagers go after him to talk about their problem. There are also two junior samurai amused by Kambei’s talent, one is very descent, Katsushiro, and the other, Kikuchyo, is not. Kambei accepts the mission. He is a wise leader. He starts immediately finding more samurai together with Katsushiro. Kikuchiyo shows interest in following Kambei but he has no idea what for. Therefore, he leaves. Finding one by one talented and noble samurai and looking for the last one, they face gain Kikuchiyo. He is also a good fighter but with no discipline. Even though he is not selected, he follows them. He should have another motivation. Later we find out that he is not born a samurai but in a farmer family and he lost them in an attack by bandits. This makes him enthusiastic for this mission. Because of his background, he builds a good relationship with villagers. During the attack, he shows great bravery although his careless acts sometimes add to the cost of the mission. He dies at the end but not before he kills the head of the bandits. A deeper bond between samurai and villagers, or better to say, another significant rebellion against social traditions and cast definitions happen by love of Katsushiro and the young girl of a villager. She is dressed up as a boy by his father in the fear of samurai. Katsushiro is enjoying the nature around the village when he faces her. He first thinks he is a boy and questions her why she is not practicing with other boys. This first encounter fires a forbidden love between a farmer girl and a samurai that remains till the end and even if they try to keep it hidden, it becomes known to everybody.
Seven Samurai is full of details in setting the interior and exterior locations which camera brings into the picture and the mise en scène utilizes for deepening the story and creating a great movie. Seven Samurai is a drama about teamwork and rejoining of different casts in society when it comes to protecting a good cause. 

Click here for wikipedia page