San Antonio’s McNay Art Museum showing Japanese film classic Samurai I on Sunday

The first installment in Hiroshi Inagaki’s epic and magisterial Samurai Trilogy, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, which will be screened this Sunday at the McNay Art Museum, follows a young bandit and his spiritual evolution into a kind of enlightened samurai.

Released the same year as Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai (1954), Samurai I is less visceral and gripping, but more impressionistic. Its gorgeous color cinematography creates a moving woodblock print of a floating world.

Toshiro Mifune (who, of course, is in Seven Samurai as well) delivers perhaps the greatest performance in his storied career, crafting a portrait that is both mythic and deeply felt. The McNay’s inaugural Summer Film Series celebrates the museum’s 70th anniversary by showcasing films released in 1954.

Free for members and $10 for nonmembers, 3-5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., (210) 824-5368, info@mcnayart.org, mcnayart.org/mcnay70.

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This article appears in Best of San Antonio 2024.