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Recent releases, reviewed by Times critics. : Compiled by Terry Atkinson
**** “The Bad Sleep Well.”
Sony. $59.95. 1960.
Akira Kurosawa’s 1960 melodrama of big business corruption has a plot that irresistibly reminds you of Shakespearean tragedy. As in “Hamlet,” a vengeful son (Toshiro Mifune) pursues his father’s seemingly omnipotent murderer: corporation head Masayuki Mori. Also involved are a pathetic sweetheart and her hotheaded brother, plus numerous betrayals, murders and seeming visitations from the dead. This juxtaposition of modern (gleaming office buildings) and archaic (the Jacobean plot) creates a weird giddiness. So does Kurosawa’s defiant, bleak resolution. “Evil may triumph,” he seems to say. “But not before I strip the last mask from its face.” Wide-screen, letter-box format; excellent subtitling.
