Word: kurosawa
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...having read The Idiot, I cannot pass judgment on the fidelity of this 1951 film version by Akira Kurosawa, but even if I someday find that he and his co-writer took no liberties with Dostoevski's plot beyond setting it in twentieth-century Japan I doubt that I shall have to revise my opinion of the film. An artist's failures, of course, should be examined for the light they throw on his successes; but so crude is the directorial technique in The Idiot, so flagrant is the absence of any sort of suspense, that there...
...this unhappy story unravels, it becomes increasingly clear why The Idiot was not released in this country until Kurosawa had established a reputation with his samurai films. For one thing, many of the actors are prone to excess, in one way or another. Toshiro Mifune, as a rowdy, alternates between bug-eyed rage and glowering indignation; Masayuki Mori, as the idiot, plays everything in a kind of sad-eyed slow motion that conveys saintliness but also causes boredom; and several secondary characters engage in the snorting histrionics that seem peculiarly Japanese. Moreover--presumably because The Idiot originally ran more than...
...fall short, others give glowing evidence that cinema, for all its vicissitudes, remains an astonishingly diversified international art. Moviemakers of eleven nations sent films. At least two of the five Japanese entries introduced gifted young directors whose achievements may well challenge the supremacy of Japan's great Akira Kurosawa. Four U.S. films flail at the nerve ends with everything from nuclear war (Fail Safe) to nymphomania (Lilith). Passionate cinemanes may also scrutinize works by established masters (Satyajit Ray, Kenji Mizoguchi, Joseph Losey), and some flashy Wunderkinder from Argentina, Sweden, Italy, France and Canada. Among the better entries...
...plant that cranks out motorcycles of all sizes and speeds (see MODERN LIVING); the glittering edifices of the banking and manufacturing cartels; the movie industry that has given the screen the best and cheapest imitations of U.S. cornball westerns ever made, as well as great directors such as Akira Kurosawa. Tokyo has 32,000 restaurants-nearly twice as many as New York. The best of the Japanese establishments can cost as much as $30 per person for food and geisha entertainment, but at sukiyaki and tempura houses like the Ginza's Suehiro and Tenichi, prices are moderate. Tokyo also...
STRAY DOG. A rookie detective (Toshiro Mifune) tracks a killer through the Tokyo underworld in a newly imported 1949 melodrama by Director Akira Kurosawa, which stirs up the rubble of postwar Japan...