The Bad Sleep Well
Wara Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru



directed by
Akira Kurosawa


Japan 1960

I would not advise watching this movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon in November.
But if you like Kurosawa, you'll love this one. Very cynical.
Opens with a fancy dinner at a high society wedding. When the cake is wheeled in, it is in the form of a building an associate of the bride's father has recently committed suicide from, because of a business scandal; we take it from there.



Mifune is great here, for a change very subdued but intense as ever. There is one particular scene when his decision to stay honest or turn into a human being like the rest of us is really balanced on a knife's edge; wonderful. In other respects also very reminiscent of High and Low, especially as the newspaper guys are mostly the same actors.

I have only a few stills to offer. For now.

How a still photographer can run into trouble
in a well-framed wide screen production

Credits:		Cast:
producers screenplay by photographed by music by	Tomoyuki Tanaka Akira Kurosawa Shinobe Hashimoto Hideo Oguni Ryuzo Kikushima Eijiro Hisaita Akira Kurosawa Yuzuru Aizawa Masaru Sato	Toshiro Mifune Takeshi Kato Masyuki Mori Takashi Shimura Akira Nishimura Kamatari Fujiwara Gen Shimuzu Kyoko Kagawa Tatsuya Mihashi	Koichi Nishi Itakura Iwabuchi Moriyami Shirai Wada Miura Kieko Tatsuo

151 minutes, B/W, Tohoscope

The Bad Sleep Well

Reflecting his fondness for American crime films and motifs, this Akira Kurosawa drama stars Toshiro Mifune as a young construction company executive who blames the company for his father's death and marries his boss's lame daughter in order to insinuate himself and expose their corrupt business practices.

This should be a widescreen version, but check anyway! presently VHS only

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