The Bad Sleep Well

The Bad Sleep Well
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAkira Kurosawa
Written byHideo Oguni
Eijirō Hisaita
Akira Kurosawa
Ryūzō Kikushima
Shinobu Hashimoto
Based onHamlet
by William Shakespeare (uncredited)[1]
Produced byAkira Kurosawa
Tomoyuki Tanaka
StarringToshiro Mifune
Masayuki Mori
Kyoko Kagawa
Takashi Shimura
Tatsuya Mihashi
CinematographyYuzuru Aizawa
Edited byAkira Kurosawa
Music byMasaru Sato
Production
companies
Toho Studios
Kurosawa Productions
Distributed byToho
Release date
  • September 19, 1960 (1960-09-19)
Running time
151 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Budget¥82.54 million[2]
Box office¥52.28 million[2]

The Bad Sleep Well (Japanese: 悪い奴ほどよく眠る, Hepburn: Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru, lit. 'The worse they are, the better they sleep') is a 1960 Japanese neo-noir crime mystery film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was the first film to be produced under Kurosawa's own independent production company.[3] It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival.

The film stars Toshiro Mifune as a young man who gets a prominent position in a corrupt postwar Japanese company in order to expose the men responsible for his father's death. It draws upon Shakespeare's Hamlet,[4] while also doubling as a critique of corporate corruption.[5] It is one of four films, along with Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963), in which Kurosawa explores the film noir genre.[3] Like Kurosawa and Mifune's next two movies, Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), Mifune's character is "a lone hero fighting against overwhelming odds and corrupt authorities."[6]

  1. ^ Blair, Gavin J. (2016-03-16). "1957: When Akira Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood' Was Ahead of Its Time". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2024-01-18.
  2. ^ a b Movie Yearbook: 1962 Edition (in Japanese). Jiji Press. 1962. pp. 211–213.
  3. ^ a b Smoliak, Kevan. "Kurosawa in Review: The Bad Sleep Well (1960)". Kurosawa in Review. Retrieved 2018-11-19.
  4. ^ "The Bad Sleep Well". Letterboxd. Retrieved 19 November 2018.
  5. ^ "The Bad Sleep Well". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2018-11-19.
  6. ^ Conrad, David A. (2022). Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan, 144, McFarland & Co.