The Idiot (film)

Infobox Film
name = The Idiot

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image_size =
caption = Original Japanese poster
director = Akira Kurosawa
producer = Takashi Koide
writer = Akira Kurosawa
Eijirō Hisaita
Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel)
narrator =
starring = Setsuko Hara
Yoshiko Kuga
Toshirō Mifune
Masayuki Mori
Takashi Shimura
music = Fumio Hayasaka
cinematography = Toshio Ubukata
editing = Akira Kurosawa
distributor = Shochiku
released = May 23, 1951 (Japan)
April 30, 1963 (US)
runtime = 166 minutes
country = Japan
language = Japanese
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:24280
imdb_id = 0043614nihongo|"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 (Kurosawa had sardonically suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead). 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.

quote|"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 Kurosawacite web
url = http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/016.htm
title = The Idiot
accessdate = 2007-09-09
publisher = Masters of Cinema]

References

External links

*
* " [http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1951/ca000840.htm The Idiot] " ja icon at the Japanese Movie Database