The Idiot

‘Dostoyevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good person. Ironically, he chose an idiot.’ With his filming of The Idiot – transposed to the icy cold Japanese Island of Hokkaido – Akira Kurosawa realises his obsession: the depiction of inevitable failure in an unjust society. Contentwise, it is the counterpart to Stray Dog, which appeared two years earlier.

Akira Kurosawa (*1910) died in Tokyo in 1998.

The Idiot / Hakuchi

Feature film, Japan 1951, 166 min, German subtitles