I don’t think so, but who am I to say. The only part of Kurosawas career that I’m not particularly fond of is everything post RAN. Although Dreams may be the exception to that, everything else seems to be pretty weak. I thought The Idiot is a great interpretation of the novel and you really shouldn’t base your expectations by what others have written about the film. If you like Kurosawas films, then you should explore them freely without limitations as you should anyone elses body of work.
Kurosawa made many bad films. He’s actually a pretty uneven director. My personal opinion is Kobayashi is a much better filmmaker.
The Idiot is at the bottom of Kurosawa’s career along with Kagemusha, Dreams, and The Most Beautiful. Kurosawa almost completely destroys the intent of the novel. The only bright spot may have been Setsuko Hara.
I think most of Kurosawa’s work is moving between good to mediocre with a few bad films and a few great ones. As they saying goes when he’s great, he’s astounding… but when he’s bad…
If you think he’s the ‘greatest director to ever live’ though you probably won’t see anything wrong with this one. No one’s perfect, and I think there are a few directors (Kurosawa being one of them) that are sometimes held to this ideal that doesn’t help him or the films surrounding him. Every artist has successes and failures and as a viewer you’re sometimes more served by their failures than successes.
I think it’s fascinating, and far from his weakest, but it may not appeal to his action fans or some Dostoevsky buffs. Certainly don’t avoid it.
It doesn’t suck, but it isn’t great. The film was cut to shreds, and it shows. Kind of his MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. THere’s a story that, when the film was completed, the studio wanted it cut in half, and his reply was, “Cut it lengthwise.”
It’s better than the dreadful THE QUIET DUEL, in that you can see in THE IDIOT some moments where the old magic works.
First of all I can’t imagine why Kagemusha is at the bottom of his career. That movie is one of his greatest. Right almost on par with Ran.
And I do think he’s the greatest filmmaker to ever live. And I actually haven’t seen anything post RAN, so I might agree with you, but possibly not.
I haven’t seen anything pre Drunken Angel either.
May I ask though, what exactly are the reasons why The Idiot is consider one of his worst films?
setsuko hara’s performance was considered grotesque by the cinema going public .the overt theatricality of her acting defied her star image.as it was seen as at least partly a hara vehicle this was disastrous.
Its an incomplete film, and can only be judged as such.
It was supposed to be 266 minutes long, and the studio cut it to 166 minutes.
Can you imagine having an hour and 40 minutes cut out of your movie?
Kurosawa was so shattered by it that he said they should have just cut it right down the middle of the film strip and been done with it.
There is no way to know how good it could have been, or how bad. It can only be viewed in its context.
That said, Kurosawa did make bad movies, and anyone who has seen Rhapsody in August and Dodeskaden can attest to that.
Wow, a film cut right in half. That’s simply tragic. I can’t understand why they’d do that right after he delivered the international hit Rashoman.
I don’t know, or can’t remember all of the facts, which could probably be obtained easily on the internet, so I don’t know if they had originally approved the lengthy script, and then had a change of heart, or if he went rogue…I’ll try and look it up.
From Wiki:
The Idiot (白痴 Hakuchi?) is a 1951 Japanese film by director Akira Kurosawa. It is based on the novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was filmed 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, the film 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 According to 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 the film 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 Kurosawa2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot_(1951_film)
I’m not even going to lie that few paragraphs from Wiki honestly made me cry. The thought of Kurosawa searching for his complete film to no avail is heart breaking, especially for me, someone who wants to see the full thing, but if he couldn’t find out no one ever will…
I’m not even going to lie that few paragraphs from Wiki honestly made me cry. The thought of Kurosawa searching for his complete film to no avail is heart breaking, especially for me, someone who wants to see the full thing, but if he couldn’t find out no one ever will…
True enough. I think Dostoevsky must be one of the most difficult authors to translate into film, though. Some books are alright, others not.
@Hidden behind the screen: You should check out Sight&Sound 7/2010, it has pretty good article about Kurosawa with excerpts from old interviews and his own brief comments on the filmography. I don’t have it at hand so I can’t quote word to word but when he made the so-called failures Rashomon hadn’t brought any fame yet. It was entered & accepted to Venice Film Festival without him knowing and he had drawn out of filmmaking already when the news of its victory reached Japan and he got sort of comeback.
By no means a bad film. Even with 40 minutes missing it’s better than “The Bad Sleep Well”. While he caricaturizes Dostoevsky’s characters quite a bit, he gets nuanced performances from everybody in this film – performances that are pretty faithful to the book, I think.
There is no such thing as a bad Kurosawa film
Hidden Behind the Screen
I’ve heard and read alot of things saying that The Idiot was Kurosawa’s biggest failure. I’ve seen almost all of Kurosawa’s films except this and a few others… He is my favorite filmmaker, and I’ve never been even slightly dissapointed with any of his films. All the films from him i"ve seen are on my favorites list and rated either four or five stars. So I just find it so baffling to imagine that he ever made a bad film. But many say that “The Idiot” is that film.
Is The Idiot by Akira Kurosawa a bad film???