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Poster for The Idiot (1951)

The Idiot (1951)

1951 · Feature film · 166 min · dir. Akira Kurosawa

  • Drama
Watch now On the Internet Archive

Synopsis

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

Synopsis from TMDb

Details

Director
Akira Kurosawa
Writer
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Composer
Fumio Hayasaka
Cinematography
Toshio Ubukata
Studio
Shochiku
Released
1951-05-23
Original title
白痴
Running time
166 minutes

Cast & crew

Reviews on the Internet Archive

★★★★★ · Numb · Klári · 2021-08-30

I cannot imagine how the missing parts would add to this experience, I expected the film to feel terribly awkward, since a lot of scenes were cut from it by the producers, out of spite. They even burned the film, so nobody could ever piece it together. But I felt numb at the end of the film. There were very few films that had this effect on me. It totally engulfed me in the atmosphere and the story. I knew it was to be the crown of his work, Kurosawa loved Dostoevsky and he had a deep understanding of The Idiot. I was and still am partial to the old Russian version and I still believe it is…

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