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Thursday, Jul 20, 2017
7 PM (148 mins)
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BAMPFA
SUBJECTS
The Bad Sleep Well
(Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru)
(The Rose in the Mud)
featuring
Toshiro Mifune, Takeshi Kato, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura,
Like High and Low (1962), which described a situation that would come to exist on the front pages ten years later (the political kidnapping of the offspring of wealthy industrialists), The Bad Sleep Well was simply too far ahead of its time to be appreciated in 1960. Seen today, it is amazing how closely its fictional events resemble contemporary revelations of corporate corruption and lawlessness. A brilliant, and highly filmic, drama set against a political background of intrigue, it has been described as Kurosawa’s Hamlet, “a black, twisted story of revenge in which a grieving son takes on powerful business and political figures. . . . Kurosawa tantalizingly reveals the young man’s plot, a bit at a time. He laces this revenge melodrama with dark irony and bitter, grotesque humor, making it a fascinating commentary on the distorted, self-serving values of big business” (Stuart Rosenthal).
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Akira Kurosawa
- Hideo Oguni
- Eijiro Hisaita
- Ryuzo Kikushima
- Shinobu Hashimoto
Cinematographer
- Yuzuru Aizawa
Language
- Japanese
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- B&W
- 'Scope 35mm
- 148 mins
Source
- Janus Films
CINEFILES
CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.
View The Bad Sleep Well documents
Kurosawa & Mifune (program note), Film Forum (New York), 2002
Kurosawa and Mifune (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 2002
Two by Kurosawa: 'The bad sleep well' and 'Redbeard' (review), Herman Pevner, 1974
The films of Akira Kurosawa (press release), Pacific Film Archive, 1974
The bad sleep well (review), Variety, Harold Myers, 1961
Die verworfenen schlafen gut (press kit)
Kurosawa on Kurosawa (article), Sight and Sound, Akira Kurosawa
The films of Akira Kurosawa (program), TLA Cinema
Kurosawa: a retrospective (program), Japan Society, David Owens
Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's The bad sleep well (flyer)
Displaying 10 of 11 publicly available documents.