| | Kwaidan (Masters Of Cinema) | |
Description
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan
features four nightmarish tales adapted from Lafcadio Hearn's classic Japanese
ghost stories. This lavish, 'scope production drew extensively on Kobayashi's
own training as a student of painting and fine arts.
For the first time in the West, The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present
the complete 183-minute original Japanese cut. Its poetic expression is said to
be unmatched in all of Japanese cinema; breathtakingly photographed on
handpainted sets, the film is at once a Japanese miniature writ large, and an
abstract wash of luminescent colours that seem to come from another world. An
electronic soundtrack by avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu plays hauntingly
with the natural sounds - crickets, rain, the cracking of wood, the loud silence
of snow. Yet the stories - four of Hearn's best known ghostly tales - strangely
contradict this plastic splendour in their simple, aching humanity; all are
tales of mortals caught by forces beyond their comprehension when the
supernatural world intervenes in their lives. One of the most memorable of these
is "Hoichi, the Earless", in which a blind young monk is compelled by the ghosts
of a famous battle to retell their story, over and over again as they gather
every night in an abandoned graveyard.
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, this complete print of Kwaidan - including 21 minutes
of footage never before released to Western audiences - also includes "The Snow
Maiden," the most eerily atmospheric of the tales in which a woodcutter marries
a woman whose true calling is to wander, enveloped in swirling snowflakes,
bringing death to mortals...
Special Features
- A new progressive transfer of the complete version of the film for optimum visual quality
- Original Japanese trailers
- Illustrated booklet featuring the original ghost stories
Technical Details
Region 2
Year 1964
Languages Japanese
Subtitles English
Duration 3 hours and 3 minutes (approx)
Genre: Horror
Certificate: 12 Suitable for Persons Aged 12 or Over
Directed by: Masaki Kobayashi
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