# The Outrage
**The Outrage** is a 1964 American Western directed by Martin Ritt, remaking [Akira Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/akira-kurosawa)'s 1950 film *Rashomon* as a story of conflicting testimonies about a rape and murder in the 1880s American Southwest.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) • [2](https://www.swank.com/college-campus/details/17410-the-outrage) It stars [Paul Newman](https://www.edgepedia.org/paul-newman) as the Mexican bandit Juan Carrasco, with [Laurence Harvey](https://www.edgepedia.org/laurence-harvey), Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, William Shatner, and Howard Da Silva.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 7 October 1964 (New York premiere); Los Angeles opening 16 October 1964[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Runtime and format | 97 minutes; black-and-white widescreen with Westrex sound[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Source | Kurosawa's film *Rashomon* (Daiei, 1950) and the 1959 Broadway play of the same name by Fay Kanin and Michael Kanin[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Screenplay | Michael Kanin, who moved the setting to the American Southwest in the 1880s[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Key crew | James Wong Howe (cinematography), Alex North (music), Frank Santillo (editing)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Production | KHF Productions (a Martin Ritt Production), released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) |
| Reception | 20% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (5 reviews); 6.2/10 on IMDb[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/outrage) |
## Spoilers
### Premise
At a disused railway station, three men waiting out a thunderstorm, a con artist ([Edward G. Robinson](https://www.edgepedia.org/edward-g-robinson)), a preacher ([William Shatner](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-shatner)), and a prospector (Howard Da Silva), discuss the trial and sentencing of the outlaw Juan Carrasco for the murder of a man (Laurence Harvey) and the rape of his wife ([Claire Bloom](https://www.edgepedia.org/claire-bloom)). Their recounting explores the conflicting testimonies of the parties to the crimes, and each version of the event raises new questions.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/outrage) As in Kurosawa's original, four differing versions of the crime are woven into a philosophical puzzle about the nature of truth.[4](https://time.com/archive/6814011/cinema-rashomon-revisited/)
The film hews close to *Rashomon*, including the rain that frames the storytelling.[5](https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/2042) The dead man's testimony, delivered through a medium in the Japanese original, is given here through an Indian shaman.[6](https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2010/01/19/film-review-rashomon-and-the-outrage/)
## Adaptation from Rashomon
Michael Kanin's screenplay draws on both Kurosawa's film and the Kanins' 1959 stage play *Rashomon*, which had itself been filmed for television twice, by [Sidney Lumet](https://www.edgepedia.org/sidney-lumet) in 1960 and Rudolph Cartier in 1961.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) • [7](https://akirakurosawa.info/rashomon/) The adaptation adds several elements of its own: the preacher's motives are placed more in doubt, since he intends to leave the town and possibly the ministry; the commoner becomes a side-show huckster with more developed dialogue, almost a satanic prosecutor; the husband and wife are more fully drawn, bringing in the defeated Confederate cause and class divisions among Anglos; and the racial dimension is heightened through Carrasco's defensiveness in the face of white hatred of Mexicans.[8](https://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/global-film-resources/_documents/themoralproblematicinrashomon.pdf)
The setting was moved to the American Southwest of the 1880s, in the post-Civil War period.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) • [9](https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/1338/) Erik R. Lofgren, a [Bucknell University](https://www.edgepedia.org/bucknell-university) scholar of East Asian studies, has argued that although both films work to silence the wife and treat the rape mainly as a plot device, the genre mismatch between the Japanese source and the Western remake gave the wife a more robust opportunity to speak her rape, in the context of the Civil Rights Movement nearing its apogee and nascent second-wave feminism in the United States.[9](https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/1338/)
## Production
A September 12, 1963 Daily Variety report announced that Martin Ritt was in final negotiations to direct the picture, which was then set to be titled *The Rape*, with Paul Newman already attached and MGM set to release it.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) Although filming was planned entirely in Hollywood, location shooting was later added; Ritt scouted locations for three days in Tucson and [Phoenix, Arizona](https://www.edgepedia.org/phoenix-arizona), accompanied by Kanin (also associate producer), cinematographer [James Wong Howe](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-wong-howe), and Newman's brother Arthur Newman as production assistant.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) An advertisement in the October 29, 1963 Daily Variety listed the release title *The Outrage*; by November 20, 1963 the title had been changed to *Judgment in the Sun* before the film was ultimately released as *The Outrage*.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography) Production ran from December 9, 1963 into spring 1964.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography)
Newman, playing his first role with a speaking accent, prepared by spending two weeks in Mexico with the film's dialect advisor, Walon Green.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography)
## Reception
TIME's review of October 16, 1964 called the film, at best, a 97-minute rehash of the vivid Japanese classic, and at worst "a clear case of Occidental death," noting that the producers had added a bumper crop of cactus, presumably hoping to repeat the success of *The Magnificent Seven*, the Western based on Kurosawa's samurai tale.[4](https://time.com/archive/6814011/cinema-rashomon-revisited/) The same review mocked the climax, in which Harvey's character trips, staggers up with a bejeweled dagger protruding bloodlessly from his chest, and announces, "Ah tripped."[4](https://time.com/archive/6814011/cinema-rashomon-revisited/)
Later critics have been similarly cool. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 20% Tomatometer from five reviews; Dennis Schwartz gave it a C-, and Emanuel Levy called it an unsuccessful American version of Kurosawa's landmark film.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/outrage) Reviewers have also questioned the transplant's plausibility: a critic writing about both films found the shaman-delivered testimony of the dead man hard to accept in a late-19th-century American courtroom, and the preacher's crisis of faith less convincing in a West where murder and lying were facts of life.[6](https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2010/01/19/film-review-rashomon-and-the-outrage/) The film's IMDb rating stands at 6.2 out of 10.[10](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-outrage)
## Place in the Rashomon lineage
*Rashomon* has been remade as a feature film three times: as this Western, as the Japanese *Misty* (1996), and as the Thai *At the Gate of the Ghost* (2011), which is often confusingly also called *The Outrage*.[7](https://akirakurosawa.info/rashomon/) The Outrage belongs to the early 1960s wave of Hollywood and European remakes of Kurosawa films as Westerns, alongside [John Sturges](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-sturges)'s *The Magnificent Seven* (1960, from *Seven Samurai*) and [Sergio Leone](https://www.edgepedia.org/sergio-leone)'s *A Fistful of Dollars* (from *Yojimbo*).[11](https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/3434/1/251332.pdf) The film's narrative device, contradictory eyewitness accounts of a single event, has since become known as the "Rashomon effect," a term familiar even to audiences who have never seen either film.[12](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/rashomon-effect-akira-kurosawa)
## References
1. [The Outrage (1964), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23312-THE-OUTRAGE?cxt=filmography)
2. [The Outrage (1964), Swank Motion Pictures](https://www.swank.com/college-campus/details/17410-the-outrage)
3. [The Outrage, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/outrage)
4. [Cinema: Rashomon Revisited, TIME (October 16, 1964)](https://time.com/archive/6814011/cinema-rashomon-revisited/)
5. [Watch The Outrage, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/2042)
6. [Film review: Rashomon (1950) and The Outrage (1964), Mano Singham](https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2010/01/19/film-review-rashomon-and-the-outrage/)
7. [Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa Information](https://akirakurosawa.info/rashomon/)
8. [The Moral Problematic in Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) & Ritt's The Outrage (1964), Dallas Baptist University](https://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/global-film-resources/_documents/themoralproblematicinrashomon.pdf)
9. [Erik R. Lofgren, "Adapting Female Agency: Rape in The Outrage and Rashōmon," Adaptation 9.3 (2016)](https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/1338/)
10. [The Outrage streaming, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-outrage)
11. [White Rose theses: on Kurosawa remakes as Westerns](https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/3434/1/251332.pdf)
12. [The Rashomon effect: a new look at Akira Kurosawa's cinematic milestone of post-truth, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/rashomon-effect-akira-kurosawa)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Westerns before 1980 › Released 1961 to 1979*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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