The Idiot (film)

The Idiot
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
All Movie Guide 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]

References

External links

• The Idiot at the Internet Movie Database
• The Idiot (Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database