There is an interesting little article at The Indigestible on Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well.
It makes a curious suggestion that the film could be seen as “a bizarre mix of the Western way of life as experienced in postwar Japan combined wi…

To be honest, I have never thought of The Bad Sleep Well in terms of it being a mixture of Japanese and Western culture, although I must say that it is an extremely interesting suggestion. Considering that the film is largely about the search to uncover masks and get to the heart of something, the juxtaposition of the West and Japan could be something Kurosawa indeed had in mind.

On the other hand, I would suppose that Japan had already by that time westernized so much that this would not necessarily be something picked up by the audience. And yet again, your observations about the use of music, and kabuki (in what is indeed generally considered Kurosawa’s Hamlet)… I don’t know. It’s an intriguing proposition.

I think I need to watch the film again. It’s been ages since I last saw it, and I must confess that I have always been a bit disappointed how the movie sort of fails to deliver what the excellent first 30 minutes promise. But I think I will be giving it another viewing sometime soon, thanks to your article.