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Runtime: 166 min / Japan:180 min (premiere) / Japan:265 min (extended version)

Trivia: Filmed as a two-part film, but cut severely by the studio against director Akira Kurosawa's wishes. Original unreleased version ran 265 minutes.

Michael Kerpan wrote:I don't think Shochiku saved any of the material it chopped out of Kurosawa's original version of "the Idiot". Maybe one of the Abes pulled the thrown away bits out of the trash? ;~}

MEK

exte wrote:Where's the official release info for this? Are there any specs yet?

Jun-Dai wrote: I'd hate to think that it was bad and I hadn't noticed.

Masters of Cinema wrote:MoC #16

THE IDIOT
(Akira Kurosawa, 1951)

Japan | 1.33:1 OAR | Date of release: July 2005

Akira Kurosawa's The Idiot, his only adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel, was a cherished project for which it is claimed he expended more effort than on any of his other films. A darkly ambitious exploration of the depths of human emotion, it combines the talents of two of the greatest Japanese actors of their generation — Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo) and Setsuko Hara (Tokyo Story, Late Spring). The Idiot is perhaps the most contemplative of all Kurosawa's works, a tone which is heightened by the unusual, trance-like performances.

Kurosawa's electrifying dramatisation uproots the novel's Russian Summer setting to a memorable, snowbound Hokkaido — the northern-most island of Japan, closest to Russia in climate and custom. War criminal Kameda (Masayuki Mori), reprieved from a death sentence, is fresh out of the asylum, mentally fragile, and prone to epileptic fits. In turn, his emotional involvement with two women (Setsuko Hara and Yoshiko Kuga) and his new, increasingly volatile friend Akama (Toshiro Mifune) leads further into madness and gross tragedy.

Filmed between Rashomon and Ikiru, Kurosawa poured himself into faithfully capturing the essence of his favourite author's work — only to see it butchered by the studio. Never at all released in its original 266-minute form, the original Kurosawa edit was only ever shown once at the Japanese premiere and then re-edited by the studio prior to the official Japanese release the following week. In spite of Kurosawa's own efforts to locate the original version in the studio's vaults forty years later, his cut is now sadly considered lost. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the longest extant version of this rarely seen film: the original 166-minute domestic release, as presented to the Japanese public in 1951.

"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 KUROSAWA


SPECIAL FEATURES

Newly restored transfer

Optional English subtitles

Production stills gallery

16-page booklet with a new essay by Daryl Chin, and a reprint of the section on The Idiot from KUROSAWA: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto.

Plus more!

peerpee wrote:The film was rather sloppily post-dubbed at the time, and Shochiku's master was a little disappointing. We've tried to correct it where we can, but there's nothing more we can do to sync what's there.