Kurutta ippêji (1926)

Director:

Teinosuke Kinugasa

Writers:

Yasunari Kawabata (short story)
Yasunari Kawabata (adaptation) ...

Release Date:

January 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife. |

Plot Keywords:

Asylum | Dream Sequence | 1920s | Japan | Avant Garde

Cast

Masuo Inoue	...	Custodian
Yoshie Nakagawa	...	Custodian's wife
Ayako Iijima	...	Daughter
Hiroshi Nemoto	...	Young Man
Misao Seki	...	Doctor
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Eiko Minami	...	Dancing girl
Kyosuke Takamatsu	...	Second madman
Minoru Takase	...	First madman
Tetsu Tsuboi	...	Third madman

Also Known As:

A Crazy Page
A Page of Madness
Kurutta ichipêji (Japan) (alternative transliteration)
Kurutta ichipeiji (Japan) (alternative transliteration)

Runtime:

59 min (1975 sound version) | 78 min (2007 restoration) (18 fps)

Country:

Japan

Language:

None

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Kinugasa Productions

Trivia:

Back then most Japanese cinemas would show domestic films, and some other cinemas would show foreign films. Ever since this films is quite different from most films which were made back then, it would be shown in latter cinemas. Quite to the surprise of everybody, the film would immediately be a big success.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois (2004)

A FORGOTTEN MASTERPIECE

An old man works as a janitor in a mental hospital to be close to his wife who is a patient there and to try to get her out.

This is surely one of the most forgotten masterpieces of the silent era and an oddity in the history of Japanese cinema. Long thought lost, a print was found in the 70s and a music soundtrack added to it, which fits perfectly with the images. It might have been influenced by cabinet of doctor Caligary (director Kinugasa claimed he never saw the German film). However it surpasses it in style and in its more convincing (and chilly) portray of the inner mental state of the inmates in the asylum. To achieve this, the film makes use of every single film technique available at the time: multiple exposures and out of focus subjective point of view, tilted camera angles, fast and slow motion, expressionist lighting and superimpositions among others. It is also a very complicated film to follow, as it has not got intertitles.

The film opens with a montage of shots of rain hitting the windows of the hospital, wind shaking trees and of thunder. The unsettling weather metaphors the mental condition of the patients and introduces one of the them: a former dancer. The combination of sounds produced by rain, wind and thunder serves as the music that incites the dancer to get into a frantic, almost hypnotic dance. In another sequence involving the same patient engaged in another frenzied dance, she is being watched by other inmates. Multiple exposures of the dancer represent the patients' point of view and their confused "view" of the world.

These are just two examples from this amazing film trying to represent the patients' subconscious and view of the "sane" world.

In three words A MUST SEE.