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IDIOT, THE (DVD) DVD

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IDIOT, THE (DVD)

No-one younger than 12 may rent or buy a '12' rated DVD.

RRP: £19.99 You Save: £12.10

DVD £7.89 Free Delivery

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Release Date: 06 December 2005

Availability: Usually dispatched within 3 days

More Details

Special Features:	Newly restored high-definition transfer., Video introduction by Alex Cox., Shochiku production stills gallery., 36-page booklet with a new essay by Daryl Chin.

Region:	Region 2

Aspect Ratio:	Aspect Ratio 1.33:1

Number of Discs:	1

Main Language:	Japanese

Subtitle Languages:	English

Cast List:	Setsuko Hara, Yoshiko Kuga, Masayuki Mori, Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura

Director:	Akira Kurosawa

Series:	Masters Of Cinema Series, The

Certificate:	12

Description

Akira Kurosawa's The Idiot - his only adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel - was a cherished project on which it is claimed he expended more effort than on any other film. 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 work, 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) lead him 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. Never at all distributed in its original 266-minute form, the film was re-edited by the studio prior to the official Japanese release. 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.