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Kwaidan - Criterion Collection Actors: Rentaro Mikuni, Michiyo Aratama Director: Masaki Kobayashi Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 164 minutes Studio: Criterion Collection Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2000-10-10 Buy from Amazon |
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From Amazon.com A masterpiece of filmmaking artifice and mood-setting atmosphere, Kwaidan consists of four ghost stories adapted from the fiction of Greek-born Lafcadio Hearn (a.k.a. Yakumo Koizumi, 1850-1904), who assimilated into Japanese culture so thoroughly that his writings reveal no evidence of Western influence. So it is that these four cinematic interpretations--perhaps more accurately described as tales of spectral visitation--are sublimely Japanese in tone and texture, created entirely in a studio with frequently stunning results. There are painterly images here that remain the most beautiful and haunting in all of Japanese cinema, presented with the purity of silent film, sparsely accompanied by post-synchronized sounds and music (by Toru Takemitsu) that enhance the otherworldly effect of director Masaki Kobayashi's meticulous imagery. When viewed in a receptive frame of mind, Kwaidan can be intensely hypnotic. Each of the four stories find their protagonists confronted by spirits that compel them to (respectively) make amends for past mistakes, maintain vows of silence, satisfy the yearnings of the undead, or capture phantoms that remain frightfully elusive. As each tale progresses, their supernatural elements grow increasingly intense and distant from the confines of reality. With careful use of glorious color and wide-screen composition, Kwaidan exists in a netherworld that is both real and imagined, its characters never quite sure they can trust what they've seen and heard. Vastly different from the more overt shocks of Western horror, the film casts a supernatural spell that remains timelessly effective. --Jeff Shannon From Description Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan features four nightmarish tales in which terror thrives and demons lurk. Adapted from traditional Japanese ghost stories, this lavish, widescreen production drew extensively on Kobayashi's own training as a student of painting and fine arts. Criterion is proud to present Kwaidan in a new ravishing color transfer. |
 "Ok, I always get sucked into these ghost stories"Lesson 1, always look at the date of the movie and then read the premise. I always read the premise, get the movie and then once it's in, realize that it's more of a Sinbad Saturday Afternoon movie then the Sixth Sense. The last story was cool about the boy who is on the cover but the rest are boring. Rent-Maybe Buy-No  "Haunting"Masaki Kobayashi begins the film Kwaidan with the most arrestingly beautiful images I have ever seen in any film. As colored ink disperses in water, shapes are formed like veils, like a Geisha dancing in colored silks, as if a dragon were emerging in the water, and one watches absolutely engaged and spellbound by this ravishing imagery. It is a seductive sequence that sets us up for the next four seductions: stories that haunt us after the film is over. The eye in the storm is shown as a literal image in the frozen landscape of the snow witch story. Unforgettably beautiful and heartbreaking. Tatsuya Nakadai stars, and he is wonderful as the woodcutter who falls in love with a snow demon. The story that is strangest, though, is the story of the blind singer. I won't give it away, but really, you will not forget the beauty and pathos of this story! Kobayashi's finely-tuned aesthetic makes these four stories absolutely unforgettable. Is beauty more terrifying than ugliness? In some ways, yes.  "Short and Sweet"I'll make this short and sweet. I enjoyed this movie very much, however, they made the mistake of putting the least accesible and uninteresting story first. But once that is over it picks up and becomes quite worthy of praise. I particularly enjoyed Hoichi The Earless, which is pictured on the front cover. I will say that this movie is likely an acquired taste and you should rent before buying. "Masterful work!"Anthology of ghost stories adapted from Lafcadio Hearn , American writer who lived in Japan . Visually stunning. The third chapter is the best. It turns around a poet who must create a epic poem about an ancient battle dictated for the leader of this dead regiment, killed in action, who emerges from the ashes to find out someone who reminds always the echoes of that bloody combat. Extraordinary! ""Kwaidan""If nothing else, "Kwaidan" can at least be called imaginative. It was the most expensive Japanese film in existance when it premiered at Cannes and took away the Grand Jury's Prize in 1964 and Kobayashi's first color film. He used this to his full advantage. There is no wasted frame, no color taken for granted here. This is an atmospheric dreamworld vision of a folk-tale Japan where night skies are a moody purple with bright gleaming stars or a classic black drear, snow sparkles beneath it in majestic rolls, and water is either dead-still or crashing epically on the rocks. This is to legendary folklore Japan what Tim Burton is to small, misty towns surrounded by woods. The characters are conficting with spirits and souls of the dead as well as their own. Each story deals with a person who has become involved with ghosts in some way, shape, or form. Of course, this does have a kind of unrealistic beauty in coexistance with what is supposed to be horror, but the horror seems a bit dated and almost devoured by the beauty rather than enhanced. Now I've never been taken in by cheap slasher movies, but this film makes me wonder if I have been spoiled somewhat by something, because while these stories are classic Japan, the endings often have the common predictable twists of American campfire stories. Especially |
