Samurai Banners
Directors: Hiroshi Inagaki
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Yoshiko Sakuma, Kinnosuke Nakamura, Yûjirô Ishihara, Katsuo Nakamura
Feudal Japan, 1543 to 1562. Kansuke Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune) is a samurai who dreams of a country united, peaceful from sea to sea. He enters the service of Takeda Shingen (Kinnosuke Nakamura), the lord of Kai domain. He convinces Takeda to kill the lord of neighboring Suwa and take his wife as a concubine. He then convinces the widow, Princess Yu, to accept this arrangement and to bear Takeda a son.
He pledges them his life. He then spends years using treachery, poetic sensibility, military and political strategy to expand Takeda's realm, advance the claim of Yu's son as the heir, and prepare for an ultimate battle with the forces of Echigo. Has Kansuke overreached? Are his dreams, blinded by love, too big?
1969 Color Anamorphic Widescreen 166 Mins.
Japanese with English subtitles.
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