The second remake of a film first produced in 1930 with another actor and filmed again in 1936 with Tsumasaburo Bando, the star of this version, the film has the 'feel' and style of samurai films made in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the golden age of period films. The story line - that of a man at odds with society - was popular at the time. The film's premise is basically one of class conflict: of the four classes in a rigidly stratified society between 1600 and 1868, the merchant was traditionally placed below the samurai, farmer, and artisan; but when, from the eighteenth century onward,…
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