thumb | A Page of Madness (1926) by Teinosuke Kinugasa

is a 1926 Japanese silent experimental horror film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Lost for 45 years until it was rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971, the film is the product of an avant-garde group of artists in Japan known as the Shinkankakuha (or School of New Perceptions) who tried to overcome naturalistic representation. The film is set in a mental institution in contemporary Japan.

Yasunari Kawabata, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, was credited on the film with the original story. He is often cited as the screenwriter, It abounds with flashbacks, quick cuts, fast camera movements, optical inventions and symbolism. It is one of the early films directed by Kinugasa as well as one of Eiji Tsuburaya's early film works, the latter credited as assistant cinematographer.

Release

Initial release

A Page of Madness was first screened in Tokyo on 10 July 1926. Screenings would have included live narration by a storyteller or benshi as well as musical accompaniment. The famous benshi Musei Tokugawa narrated the film at the Musashinokan theater in Shinjuku in Tokyo. It grossed over a thousand dollars a week, which was impressive at the time considering the price of movie admission was only five cents.

The profits came as a relief to the director, who almost had become bankrupt forming his Kinugasa Motion Picture League,

Film scholar Aaron Gerow notes that in a culture that looked down on domestic movie production, A Page of Madness was considered one of the few Japanese films equal to foreign ones; even with that, however, it didn't have much influence on other filmmakers. kept in his storage cabin in 1971. The rediscovered version lacks a third of the original content.

A music score for the film was composed by Muraoka Minoru in 1971, commissioned by Kinugasa himself. and the Berlin International Film Festival.

Aonno Jiken Ensemble created a score and debuted it at a midnight screening for the film at the 1998 Seattle Asian American Film Festival. A recording of the accompaniment was released on CD later that year. A documentary featuring the group's rehearsals of the score was created in 2005 and screened at that year's annual Cityvisions festival in New York.

21st-century screenings

The film was shown at the 2004 Melbourne International Film Festival and the 2018 Milwaukee International Film Festival. Turner Classic Movies aired the George Eastman House Archives print of the film in 2016, using a score by the Alloy Orchestra.

CAMERA JAPAN, a yearly Japanese cultural festival based in the Netherlands, featured a screening of the film with live musical accompaniment as part of its 2017 lineup. The same year, the film, with a live accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra, was presented at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Alloy Orchestra also provided the score for a screening at the Lincoln Center in New York City, Four days later, it was screened at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, accompanied by a live piano accompaniment. Benshi Nanako Yamauchi narrated screenings, accompanied by local music group Little Bang Theory, at the Kenilworth 508 Theatre in Milwaukee 8 and 9 October 2022; at the Michigan Theater on 13 October 2022; and at the Detroit Film Theatre on 16 October 2022. Techno band Coupler was commissioned by the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC to create and perform a new score to accompany the film's screening on 5 May 2023.

The film was screened alongside a fragment of Kinugasa's partially lost 1927 film Oni Azami at the 37th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy as part of a tribute section celebrating the director's work.

The film was screened at Film Fest Gent 2023 and Roadburn Festival 2024 accompanied by a live soundtrack by the band Wiegedood.

Reception

Modern assessments

Reception of A Page of Madness since its rediscovery has been mostly positive. Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews awarded the film a grade A, calling it "a vibrant and unsettling work of great emotional power". Time Out, praised the film, writing "A Page of Madness remains one of the most radical and challenging Japanese movies ever seen here." Panos Kotzathanasis from Asian Movie Pulse.com called it "a masterpiece", praising the film's acting, music, and imagery. Jonathan Crow from Allmovie praised its "eerie, painted sets", lighting, and editing, calling it "a striking exploration of the nature of madness". Nottingham Culture's BBC preview of the film called it, "a balletic musing on our subconscious nightmares, examining dream states in a way that is both beautiful and highly disturbing." Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader praised the film's expressionist style, imagery, and depictions of madness as being "both startling and mesmerizing".

It was included at number 50 in Slant Magazines "100 Best Horror Movies of All Time", citing the film's visuals and atmosphere as "lingering long after the film ends".

See also

  • List of rediscovered films

References

Sources

  • A Page of Madness at SilentEra
  • A Page of Madness: The Lost, Avant Garde Masterpiece from Early Japanese Cinema (1926) in Film | January 17th, 2019
  • Midnight Eye Entry