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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 |
 "LISTEN to this movie!!!"With his "Kwaidan" score, Toru Takemitsu created the most remarkable work of art by using sound as music and music as sound. The line between the two is as blurred as the film form would allow it, in 1964 or nowadays. True to the Japanese tradition, his sound is minimal and well measured. It is executed with great taste and utmost precision but retains all of its natural qualities. It is probably the most effective score that I've ever heard. The only question for me is whether this can even be called 'a score': it certainly deserves a new word to be coined for it. In fact, I do remember noticing unusual opening credit for it but I can't remember the exact words that were used. If you were moved by the flow of his notes in "Woman in the Dunes" or were intrigued with Masaru Sato's amazing score for "Yojimbo", this will take you to a completely new level of listening. It's an absolute aural masterpiece from this high master of film music! Of course, this is only my opinion but I usually listen to movies more carefully than I watch them. You'll just have to trust my ears and their taste on this one.  "A Feast"The best work of director Masaki Kobayashi is within calling distance of the achievements of other Japanese masters like Kurosawa and Mizoguchi. Perhaps inevitably uneven, given that it consists of four stories, KWAIDAN's best moments combine a graphic sense of composition, lush, dense colors, a tactile response to materials, and a tart, poetic use of sound. All, despite the occasional ragged shot, are served admirably by Criterion's transfer. Watching KWAIDAN is a lot like sitting down to a full meal. The first course, "The Black Hair," is a fairly bland and predictable salad, spiced with some extraordinary filmmaking. (The sound of the second wife's kimono gliding over the wooden floors hauntingly condenses her character to a single, silky detail, for example.) It isn't bad, just mildly disappointing, leaving us hungry for more. "The Woman in the Snow" would be a perfectly realized appetizer, except that with its powdered sugar snow, painted sunsets and theatrical lighting effects, it looks more like dessert. The sweet taste is a trick, however, a way of disarming us so that when the horror arrives, its raw simplicity is deeply frightening. "Hoichi the Earless," the main course, is simply stunning, executed at a virtually indescribable level of formal control. There are no fewer than *five* layers of representation in the segment. The relatively Realistic framing story of Hoichi seamlessly slides into dreams and fantasy in which mists and shadows creep around characters posed as motionless, hieratic masses. A legendary battle between the Genji and Heike clans is staged in Kabuki-like bright colors, broad gestures and theatrical backdrops, intercut with a painting of the battle, while the soundtrack provides a *third* description through both a musical recounting and a narration of the story. "Hoichi" has the pictorial extravagance of RAN's battle scenes, but where Kurosawa paints his canvas with broad, epic strokes, Kobayashi abstracts the action into a few, highly compressed gestures. The segment is marred only by some low-comedy scenes which fortunately are brief enough not to get in the way. The film concludes with "In a Cup of Tea," the most original as a story and, with its subdued colors, traditional editing and focus on the actors instead of the decor, the most Naturalistic as filmmaking. "Tea" combines a kind of Borgesian menace with an understated, knowing sense of humor. This is the real dessert, pleasant, surprising, occasinally funny but also, in its very last shot, an astringent reminder of what has come before. It is a suitably satisfying conclusion to a filling meal. "Amazing!!!"This collection of stories is a mysterious journey into the folklore of Japan. The emphasis, though in a visual format, seems to be the ancient oral traditions of myth from a society that remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of years. The cinematography is compelling, and the stories are scarey as hell. If you like scarey movies and have a passion for the culture and traditions of Japan, get this movie. If you are expecting ninjas or gunplay, this is not the movie for you "The greatest Japanese horror film ever made"Wow! What a gorgeous film this is! Kwaidan is quite possibly the most beautiful scary movie you will ever see. The cinematography in Kwaidan is superb, and the film has an epic feel to it, rather unusual for a horror film. In fact, I would even call this film the "2001" of horror movies, and I imagine that if Stanley Kubrick had gotten around to directing a Japanese-style horror movie, it would look a lot like this film. Kwaidan was made in the mid-1960s, and at the time, it was the most expensive Japanese film ever made. It was a big success at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. The film is a collection of four ghost stories, told with a decidedly Japanese flair. The first story is about a man who abandons his wife only to return years later. The second story is about a man's encounter with a snow vampiress. The third story, my favorite, is about a monk who gives nocturnal recitals for mysterious and ghostly hosts. The last story is about a man who drinks down a ghost. That's all you really need to know, as the stories are quite straight-forward. It is the manner in which they are told and photographed that makes them so powerful. The pacing is very deliberate and slow but gives you plenty of time to appreciate the numerous beautiful images that appear on-screen. The director, Kobayashi, filmed Kwaidan in a very surrealistic fashion, and the entire soundtrack was post-dubbed. As such, the sound effects come and go in very unexpected ways, like nervous twitches. This lends a further eerie atmosphere to the film. The DVD is by Criterion, so you can expect a great transfer. And the transfer is absolutely stunning! Just look at the trailer (included on the DVD) and compare with the quality of the film itself, and you will be amazed. The picture is crystal clear with bright colors and deep black (the many night scenes look great, not muddy at all). There are no pixelations or artifacts and barely a trace here or there of scratch marks that belie the film's age. Sound is monophonic. Too bad Criterion didn't include a commentary track, but I suppose with an almost 3-hour film, there wasn't much room left on the DVD for anything else. Still, if you like eerie ghost movies like The Innocents or The Haunting (original B/W version) or The Changeling, you will really appreciate this film. Kwaidan is not horrifying or scary in a "Halloween" or "Scream" manner; rather it creates an uneasy sensation of dread and despair. Highly highly recommended!  "Pretty film, nice sets, boring movie"I first saw this film in college in 1970. I had remembered only the first of the 4 stories, and the third, "Hoichi the Earless", which my freshman roommate and I thought was a hilarious title. I had no idea what the collection was called, and had not seen the film since it finally came out on DVD. I rediscovered in a roundabout way: I had visited Matsue and became very interested in the life and works of Lafcadio Hearn after visiting his home there. The movie is somewhat reminiscent of a kabuki performance in that is slow and boring, with a beautiful visuals. It is interesting to me that after thirty years, I had absolutely no recollection of the second and fourth parts stories in this film. This time, I liked the fourth story the most, because the sets reminded me of places I had visited in Western Honshu (Matsue, Himeji, Hagi for example). The DVD reproduces the original color of the film beautifully but adds absolutely nothing to the film in terms of bonus material except the original Japanese trailer and the fact that you can turn subtitles off. The subtitles are somewhat distracting and since the stories have practically no plot whatsoever I might have enjoyed Kwaidan more without them. If you are the sort of person who enjoys watching 8 hours of Noh drama sitting on your knees, you should buy this DVD. |
