Additional information
by Joan Mellen (Author)
In Seven Samurai (1954) a whole society is on the verge of irrevocable change. Akira Kurosawa's celebrated film, regarded by many to be the major achievement of Japanese cinema, is an epic that evokes the cultural upheaval
brought on by the collapse of Japanese militarism in the 16th century, but at the same time echoes also the sweeping cultural changes occurring in the aftermath of the American Occupation that followed Japan's defeat in the Second World War.
Author Biography
Joan Mellen is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Among her books are Marilyn Monroe (1973), Voices from the Japanese Cinema (1975), The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema (1976), the dual biography Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lilian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett (1996), and, more recently, Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas (Bloomsbury 2016) and Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty (2018).
She is the author of In the Realm of the Senses (2004) and Modern Times (2006), also in the BFI Film Classics series.
