Main Cast: Masayuki Mori, Toshiro Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Yoshiko Kuga
Release Year: 1951
Country: JP
Run Time: 166 minutes
Plot
A former soldier is branded an idiot because of his epileptic seizures caused by wartime experiences. He shows unbridled compassion for people after he moves in with friends of his family as he tries to help a young man ruined by the war and a woman hounded by a wealthy but cruel suitor. All the characters are victims of the war and its devastating emotional aftershocks. Taken from Feodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel, the screenplay was written by the film's director, Akira Kurosawa. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, Hakuchi was severely cut at the request of the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version. When the re-edited version was also deemed too long by the studio, Kurosawa sardonically suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead.[1] 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."
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