A Page of Madness is a film that will take more than a single viewing to fully comprehend. It is a nightmarish fantasy that threatens to overwhelm its audience. Its searing, fevered imagery bombards you from the opening minutes and in an unrelenting wave of bravura filmmaking it refuses to stop until the closing credits. Made in 1926, but thought lost until an incomplete print resurfaced in the early ‘70s, Teinosuke Kinugasa’s surrealist classic is one of the most startling and expressive silent films I have had the fortune of watching.

The story follows a man who takes a janitor’s job at an insane asylum in order to free his imprisoned wife. Foregoing intertitles and utilising a dizzying array of…

This was my essay on Kurutta ippêji (A Page of Madness) for my Film History & Crit class. I left the in text citations in.

Thanks to Adam Cook for the recommendation.

Although Japan’s cultural and artistic history is already considered astronomical and reputable, some early works were never discovered because of World War 2 and the destruction it had on Japanese art. However, out of the destruction there were a few films which had survived the monstrosity and calamity the war had created; one of which being Teinosuke Kinugasa’s, Kurutta ippêji (A Page of Madness), which tells the story of a man who takes a job as a janitor at an insane asylum to rescue his wife who is a…

I wasn't prepared for this - but to be fair I don't suppose it would be easy to prepare for the sort of experience that A Page of Madness is set to provide within how brief it may be. Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness is an insane film, but in such a sense that would much better be experienced for oneself rather than described. After having been lost for nearly forty-five years, Teinosuke Kinugasa's surrealist experiment still remains one of the most baffling films to have ever been made, a film to define its time for it is simply something that we are unlikely to ever stumble across once again. Essential surrealist cinema? I would not be one to…

Starting a bit earlier than planned, but I couldn't decide what to watch, so why not. So here is my First Hoop-Tober Film

If I were not watching this film during Hoop-tober, I'd probably write one of those cop-out reviews and it'd probably say something stupid like "Whoa, fuckin' trippy, man," but since this is Hoop-tober, I feel compelled to write something semi-substantial and coherent for this film.

The problem with that? A Page of Madness is not a coherent film. It is a decidedly non-coherent film. It fully commits itself to portraying a descent into madness, so much so that at times even answering the most basic of plot questions - "What happens?" - is nearly impossible. Eschewing title…

I saw this free on youtube, but judging by other reviews on here it's not that intertitles were missing, but that there never were any. My husband said Japanese silent cinema included a narrator in the theater, called a benshi, sort of like how Western silent cinema included an organist or maybe a piano player. I wonder what the benshi would have said during this movie.

The synopses of the plot are fascinating. I had seen a synopses awhile ago and all I could remember was that a man was trying to get his wife out of a mental hospital. The TCM page has more thorough information, about the making of it and some information about Japanese film history as…

It is a miracle that this film merely exists at all in its current state. A vast majority of silent cinema has been lost in time. To me this film represents the fragility of history. And although some of the film has perished, the hour or so that has survived gives us a unique window into Japanese culture in the 1920s. As a piece of history this is simply fascinating to watch, though it is not a film for the average movie goer. It is intentionally crafted in a bizarre surrealist fashion to elicit confusion, generating madness that is all too palpable. Its lighting and imagery establishes a heavy nightmarish atmosphere. Its experimental essence is admirable, with editing that is…

Film #2 of Hooptober 4.0

There’s little I can do to properly translate the chaos of A Page of Madness into words. Each attempt feels like a disservice no matter how thoroughly I describe a sequence, because this is a film built upon the clashing of images, both horizontally and vertically. Even before entering the asylum, the film breaks from conventions of seeing: the opening sequence presents a downpour in brief flashes, as rushing water runs over images of windows and rain is layered on top of sharp edges. These images build into a cacophony of shots which collide with frantic energy, until we’re whisked away, into the asylum.

There, the energy is translated into the patients’ bodies, which dance,…