Main Cast: Masao Inoue, Yoshi Nakagawa, Ayako Iijima
Release Year: 1926
Country: JP
Run Time: 60 minutes
Plot
This virtuoso Japanese silent film, made in 1926, was re-released in 1973. It uses no title-boards, so the story is uninterrupted -- an unusual technique in the silent era. Indeed, except for the absence of dialogue, reviewers agree that this classic movie has a very modern look and "feel." The Seaman (Masao Inoue) works as a volunteer at the mental institution where his wife (Yoshie Nakagawa) is locked up. She was placed there after she had some sort of fit and tried to drown their infant son. The story of their family life, and of this incident, is told in flashbacks. He hopes that by working at the institute, he will have some opportunity to reawaken her to the present and take her away. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Review
Written by future Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata and directed by master filmmaker Teinosuke Kinugasa, Page of Madness is a landmark of world cinema. Not only is Page the first mature Japanese experiment film, making deft use of such cinematic devices as flashbacks, double exposure, and rapid camera movement, but it also synthesizes a number of stylistic trends seen in European avant-garde cinema. The film's eerie, painted sets and stark lighting create an exterior manifestation of the patient's interior turmoil, recalling Robert Weine's expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1913). The film's crisp, elliptical editing is reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein's use of montage in such classics as Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). As Donald Richie has noted, Page of Madness creates an impression of an insane asylum much as Eisenstein paints an impression of a massacre in Battleship Potemkin's famous Odessa steps sequence. All of these stylistic innovations merge to form a striking exploration of the nature of madness. This masterpiece was long thought lost, until the early 1970s, when the director found a print in his garden storeroom. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Cast
Masao Inoue - Custodian
Yoshi Nakagawa - Custodian's Wife
Ayako Iijima - Custodian's Daughter
Misao Seki - Doctor; Hiroshi Nemoto - Young Man; Minoru Takase - First Madman; Kyosuki Takamatsu - Second Madman; Tetsu Tsuboi - Third Madman; Eiko Minami - Dancing Girl
A Page of Madness(狂った一頁,Kurutta Ippēji?) is a silent film by Japanesefilm directorTeinosuke Kinugasa, made in 1926. It was lost for fifty years until being 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 Shinkankaku-ha (or School of New Perceptions) who tried to overcome naturalistic representation. Yasunari Kawabata, who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, was credited on the film with the original story. He is often cited as the film's screenwriter, and a version of the scenario is printed in his complete works, but the scenario is now considered a collaboration between Kawabata, Kinugasa, Banko Sawada, and Minoru Inuzuka.
The film takes place in an asylum. Although cut together in an ever maddening maelstrom, the film loosely tells the story of the janitor of the asylum. His wife is one of the patients. One day their daughter shows up at the asylum to tell her mother about her engagement. This sets off a number of subplots and flashbacks which stitch together the family history (for instance, why the mother is a patient and why the daughter is unaware of her father's job as a janitor).
The film does not contain intertitles, making it difficult to follow for audiences today. The print existing today is missing nearly a third of what was shown in theaters in 1926. Showings in 1920s Japan would have included live narration by a storyteller or benshi (弁士) as well as musical accompaniment. The famous benshi Musei Tokugawa narrated the film at the Musashinokan theater in Shinjuku in Tokyo.
References
Gardner, William O. (Spring 2004). "New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke's Films and Japanese Modernism". Cinema Journal43 (3): 59-78.
Gerow, Aaron (2008). A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. ISBN9781929280513.
Lewinsky, Mariann (1997). Eine Verrückte Seite: Stummfilm und filmische Avantgarde in Japan. Chronos. ISBN3905311607.
