The Bad Sleep Well
| The Bad Sleep Well | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Akira Kurosawa |
| Written by | Hideo Oguni Eijirō Hisaita Akira Kurosawa Ryūzō Kikushima Shinobu Hashimoto |
| Based on | Hamlet by William Shakespeare (uncredited) |
| Produced by | Akira Kurosawa Tomoyuki Tanaka |
| Starring | Toshiro Mifune Masayuki Mori Kyōko Kagawa Tatsuya Mihashi Takashi Shimura |
| Cinematography | Yuzuru Aizawa |
| Edited by | Akira Kurosawa |
| Music by | Masaru Sato |
Production companies | Toho Studios Kurosawa Productions |
| Distributed by | Toho |
Release date |
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Running time | 151 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Budget | ¥82.54 million |
| Box office | ¥52.28 million |
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. 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, while also doubling as a critique of corporate corruption. 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. Like Kurosawa's next two movies with Mifune, Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), Mifune's character is "a lone hero fighting against overwhelming odds and corrupt authorities."