This was my first experience of the MacBeth story, and I think for me the tale will always conjure up images of the aldritch Spider’s Web forest from this film. I think it’s the best black and white cinematography I’ve ever seen. It’s facinating just to see a western story acted out in a Japanese setting. Akira Kurosawa is some kind of movie-making miracle. He had been making films for more than a decade already when this came out in 1957, and his next Samurai movie Oni is slated for 2006.