The Idiot (film)

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The Idiot
白痴

Original Japanese poster
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Produced by Takashi Koide
Written by Akira Kurosawa
Eijirō Hisaita
Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel)
Starring Setsuko Hara
Yoshiko Kuga
Toshirō Mifune
Masayuki Mori
Takashi Shimura
Music by Fumio Hayasaka
Cinematography Toshio Ubukata
Editing by Akira Kurosawa
Distributed by Shochiku
Release date(s) May 23, 1951 (Japan)
April 30, 1963 (US)
Running time 166 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Idiot (白痴 Hakuchi?) is a 1951 Japanese film by director Akira Kurosawa. It is based on a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel of the same name. Hakuchi was shot in black and white at an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. It was Kurosawa's second film for the Shochiku studio, after the previous year's Scandal. Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, Hakuchi was severely cut by the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version. The director's cut has never been released, and thus the theatrical release is a 166 minute cut omitting 100 minutes. According to renowned Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, there are no existing prints of the original 265 minute version. Kurosawa would return to Shochiku forty years later to make Rhapsody in August, and, according to Alex Cox, is said to have searched the Shochiku archives for the original cut of Hakuchi, to no avail.

"Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one — I still think — who writes most honestly about human existence."

—Akira Kurosawa[1]
Setsuko Hara in The Idiot
Setsuko Hara in The Idiot

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Idiot. Masters of Cinema. Retrieved on 2007-09-09.

[edit] External links

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