How to Resist Trump: Lessons from The Seven Samurai

Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa dir, Toho Films, 1954. Photo the author.

Preface: The big screen

When I was young, movies were big. The Continental Theatre on Austin Street in Forest Hills, Queens, which opened in 1963, was a relatively small movie house, with 300 seats and a screen about 25 feet wide. The Cinemart on Metropolitan Avenue had five times as many seats, and a screen nearly the size of a tennis court. When I saw Saturday Night Fever there in 1977...