Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress is a true folk epic. It has a cast of thousands, plenty of fighting, a mute princess, Misa Uehara, a fire ritual and a noble hero (Toshiro Mifune). In fact, it contains all the ingredients of a first-rate western except a Shogun wedding. In addition, Kurosawa shores up his extravaganza with dramatically effective photography and he has directed his actors to move and speak in a style derived from Japan's traditional Kabuki Theater.

Set in the Middle Ages, The Hidden Fortress relates the adventures of five people who are trapped in an enemy province with a fortune in gold that is hidden inside several hundred hollow branches. This gold is all that remains of the wealth of the Akizukis, a noble house recently deposed in civil war. The Akizuki princess (dressed in tight blouse and bulky shorts) and her loyal general (half-shaven but infinitely courageous) travel with the gold-filled faggots. Two peasant refugees and a woman saved from prostitution do the manual labor.

It would be pointless to retell every episode or every narrow escape; like all epics The Hidden Fortress is packed with excitement, blood and wily stratagems. But this film is more than an adventure story because it treats predictable situations with unusual depth.

A case in point is the prison scene. The day of D.W. Griffith has passed, and sheer numbers on the screen no longer amaze anyone. Kurosawa, however, manages to restore our old sense of wonder by taking his shots from impressive angles and by composing each sequence powerfully. We watch a limitless mob suddenly spring to life in their enormous dungeon; at the peak of their fury only the tips of their improvised clubs are visible, flailing fiercely up and down in the prison gloom. Then the camera shifts to the hill outside. From a point at the base of the slope, we watch the gate burst open at the onslaught of hundreds of men who pour forth and seem to run right at us from above. The effect is awesome.

The greater part of The Hidden Fortress takes place in a craggy range of mountains. This setting enables Kurosawa to show his characters at marvelous visual angles, sometimes prone against a sharply rising cliffside, sometimes slipping downwards in an avalanche. Always when the action reaches its peak, he increases the tension by emphasizing the natural angularity, and hence the precarious status of Princess and her followers.

In the final scene, when the fortune is safe in friendly in Hayakawa province, the two peasants come to the Princess for their rewards. She receives them in a sand garden where all is perfectly ordered and symmetrical. She and the general are arranged on a dais so as to be in perfect linear harmony with their surroundings. They have left the mountains and their angularity behind; Kurosawa underlines this happy and tranquil ending with a visual schema that is serene and classically ordered.

For the Japanese viewer, The Hidden Fortress must have a very archaic flavor, since Kurosawa has grafted onto it the gruff, stylized vocal tones and, sometimes the abrupt, hyperdramatic gestures of Kabuki. When the two peasants climb mountains in a completely prone position, they recall the balletic exaggeration of Japan's ancestral theatre, as do the shrieks that serve the Princess for "normal" speech. Indeed, she must remain silent throughout the journey because her voice would "reveal her identity."

Whatever their connection with Kabuki, the movements in this picture appear to have been planned with choreographic precision; a lancefight becomes a dance, and the whole story takes on the ritual overtones always associated with true epic.

But please don't get the wrong idea. This is no self-conscious art film. It is done with great finesse, but that doesn't prevent it from being as good a tale as Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In fact, it's even better.