A Page of Madness
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Year: 1926
Rating: 8.0
This silent
film was thought lost for decades until the director Teinosuke Kinugasa
found it among his possessions in the 1970's. It is a shame he didn't have
copies for all of his films because so many have been lost. But if he were
to find only one of his silent films, this would certainly be a good choice.
It is an astonishing visual experimental film with horrific images, rapid
cutting and editing as if on an overdose of a mix of some hallucinogenic
drug and speed, usage of double and triple exposures, vivid distortion and
an all around feeling of nothing being real. Of the world going out
of control. All this accompanied by a musical score - written for this after
being re-discovered - that is jittery and powerful. This is not so much a
tone poem as a tone nightmare. I have a bad feeling that I will have some
weird dreams tonight. And to add to the sense of dread, it nearly all takes
place in an insane asylum.
My version had no intertitles (I don't
think any of them do) - but smarter people than me have pieced together a
plot of sorts - not that it matters all that much. A man gets a job in the
asylum as the janitor because his wife is a patient. He hopes to escape with
her but instead seems to go mad himself. It is really all about the technique
and the horrific faces of the inmates - there are two amazing scenes -one
when the patients riot and go into a frenzy - the other when he tries to
escape with her against her will and the patients close around him. And then
they put on Kabuki masks which was creepy. It is a delirium of emotions and
movement. I don't have the cinematic language to explain all this -
I just know by the end I felt very disturbed by the imagery and music. It
is not a horror film per se but many horror elements are here and it made
me think that some Japanese horror film back when they were knocking them
out like pancakes should have had a plot that when people see this undiscovered
film they go insane. It is up on Youtube, I believe.