The Bad Sleep Well

Kurosawa’s first independent venture is a revenge tragedy in which a rising executive (Toshiro Mifune) attempts to expose big business corruption. As an employee of a big housing corporation, he marries the boss's daughter in the hope of establishing the truth of his father’s ‘suicide’. The explicit social significance may now seem reminiscent of a Warner Bros. drama, but it proved controversial in Japan at the time, and there is nothing dated about Kurosawa’s deft handling of the TohoScope format.

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