Belladonna of Sadness

1973 ‘哀しみのベラドンナ’ Directed by Eiichi Yamamoto

A peasant woman is raped by the local lord on her wedding night. To take revenge, she makes a pact with the Devil himself who appears as an erotic sprite and transforms her into a black-robed vision of madness and desire.

Aiko Nagayama Tatsuya Nakadai Takao Ito Masaya Takahashi Shigako Shimegi Natsuka Yashiro Masakane Yonekura

Alternative Titles

The Tragedy of Belladonna, Belladonna der Trauer, La tristeza de Belladonna, Kanashimi no Beradona, Kanashimi no belladonna, La belladone de la tristesse, Belladonna Of Sadness, Belladonna, La Belladonna de la tristesse, Печальная Белладонна, Kanashimi no beradonna, Belladone, La belladone du chagrin

drama animation fantasy

86 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★½ 6

In 1973, the Japanese equivalent of Walt Disney decided to adapt a 19th century book about the feminist history of witchcraft into an animated prog-rock musical about a medieval peasant girl who gets gang-raped on her wedding night and then turns to Satan for help with her revenge. This is really a thing that happened. Strange even by the impossibly high standards of Japanese cinema, the wild and exhausting "Belladonna of Sadness" was conceived by Osamu Tezuka — the godfather of manga — as the third and final chapter of Mushi Productions' Animerama trilogy (a series of explicitly adult animated films that also included erotic riffs on "Cleopatra" and "A Thousand and One Nights").
Tezuka would drop out of the…
Review by matt lynch ★★★★½

God and the Devil are all men and all men are one man. She recodes their order and rewrites their body with her sacrifice/ecstasy. Animated sex revolution phantasmagoria. The damndest thing.
Review by BRAT ★★★½ 7

this psychedelic animated musical erotica version of Lady Snowblood (also released 1973?!?!?!?) rules HARD once you get past the gratuitous rape scenes. the gorgeous watercolor animation makes the sexual violence a bit easier to tolerate than, say, the thematically-similar live-action Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) ...... still a bit icky for the all-male writers to juxtapose that trauma against a montage of erotic depictions of the ‘70s sexual liberation though, imho, even when it’s drawn that beautifully and creatively!! also, not enough revenge ....... >:(
streaming for freeeeee on kanopy (best watched dummmm stoned)
Review by nathaxnne (hiatus) ★★★★★ 18

The way things have always been. The way things have always been done. The way things will always be. A trinity of poisonous lies.
A world run on murder, rape, torture, privation, the annihilation of all known being in exchange for second-order abstract value meaningless without the existence of life on earth. Is this not sacrifice enough? What more should be sacrificed and for what?
The Satanic Witch draws their power from the time and space after trauma, privation, torture, rape, death, when what has been allotted by the empty promises of rights and station and labor and position has been stripped from you by the very entities who proposed giving you these things in the first place. When all…
Review by sam ★ 6

um sorry but i think this is just straight up gross - it's another faux 'female empowerment' story that has been done over and over again (always.... by..... men....). yes, the visuals are technically great, but they did nothing for me either because i spent the whole time uncomfortably aware that a man was behind them. besides that, the film is way too reliant on visual metaphors to the point of overkill (flower = vagina? never seen that one before! also satan doesn't need to be represented as a penis every 2 secs for me to #understand). jeanne seems to purely exist as a visual spectacle (for men) for at least 45 mins of the film before apparently gaining any sort…
Review by Jenna Ipcar ★ 3

Oh god, what a load of shit. The best I can say about this is that the illustration style is beautiful. Oh and if you ever wanted to see a clam go to town on a snail, or an alligator eat out a woman, this is the movie for you.
This movie is for your penis, by your penis and about your penis. I'm having a very hard time seeing where anybody saw 'feminism' in this other than the weird shoved in ending where the movie pretends the french symbol of Liberty was a real person? Jeanne's entire life and death is based around, sponsored by and about penises. Every image of her is showing off her body sexually via…
Review by Sally Jane Black 2

While it lacked thematic subtlety (the devil takes the form of a penis, a lot), it was beautiful enough in animation to smooth over that. It combined brutality and eroticism in a manner that certainly stepped over the line at times, but that aforementioned unsubtle theme was strongly anti-sexist.
Review by Stephen Gillespie ★★★★ 11

LB Friend Fest 2021 - 4/20 (Wider details here)
Friend: Cody
Cody is just cool. He has fascinating taste in films and writes these amazingly poetic reviews. I write too much, I know, I can't help it. This is why I love how succinct Cody is, getting to the impressionist core of something - conveying his view - while remaining poetic. Cody is also witty, empathetic and an all round great dude. I am a fan.
Why this film?
Avant-garde Japanese animation that's in his top 4? Sign me up.
Review:
When taken as a whole, this is a majestic work. The first, and most overt, element to deal with is the film's visuals. This is one of the most…
Review by Anika ★★★★ 1

The devil is a penis.
Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★ 2

Can rape be beautiful?
The answer is no. Never.
Review by Ben ★

CW: rape
I think this film really needs to learn what the word subtlety means because some things are a bit too obvious. And by a bit too obvious I mean the devil is a penis, the warmongering tyrant's head consists of a skull and crossbones and a vagina is represented as a flower.
Apart from the lack of any kind of nuance, the film feels completely against what the supposed message is. There are long and objectifying shots of Jeanne that linger in a creepy and perverse manor. Her empowerment comes only when the devil (A LITERAL PENIS) rapes her. The majority of the film preceding Jeanne's eventual """"empowerment""" sees her get raped multiple times by various people, beaten…
Review by Craig Rogers ★★★★★ 5

I was (am) the lead restoration artist on the new 4K restoration that'll be rolling out a bit later this year (2015). I must say while I worked on it, the visuals had me scratching my head. It runs the gambit from gorgeous watercolor paintings one moment to crude drawings of some truly weird shit the next. I honestly didn't know what to expect when I finally was able to watch it as a whole...and my hopes and expectations were quite low.
Then I saw it. Wow. I can honestly say I've never seen anything quite like it and it's so much more than the sum of it's parts. The artwork is amazing. The voice actors (particularly Tatsuya Nakadai as the devil!).
Be warned though - there are scenes of rape. It also features pretty much every kink you can imagine.

Recent reviews

Review by Ozias ★★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A stunningly horrific piece of art. Please do not watch this if you are triggered by abstractly pictured rape. This movie is an amazing portrayal of feminism and self advocacy, and how no-matter how strong you are, some are dealt with worse hands than others.
SPOILERS❌Jeanne, a peasant woman attempting to marry her fiancé, Jean, is brutally raped by the lord of her village. After this, the devil introduces himself to her, and grants her power. She uses her intelligence and seduction that once lead to her downfall to her advantage, eventually taking power over the lord. She sexually liberates her village, eventually leading to mass deaths from a sexually transmitted plague. She is eventually burned at the stake by…
Review by luiz filipi ★★★

esqueci d loga filme chatao nao vale o tempo q eu gastei procurando torrent e legenda a epoca ao menos a estetica e impcaveo
Review by Skylar Hardison ★★★½

good for her
Review by mira santo tomas ½

hell no this is so fucked up and for what?? for nothifn. they accomplished nothing. no this movie isnt “challenging” it’s banal, repulsive, misogynistic, and pointless. fuck you. men stop making anti objectification movies and objectifying the fuck out of every woman that appears on the screen challenge. also i love all the men in the reviews giving this 5 stars 😁😊😊👏👏👏👏👏 what would we do without u 👏👏👏 im so glad there are some decent men out there supporting feminist movies 😊😊👏👏👏 trophies for everyone 🏆🥺😀😊 but seriously im fucking sick and tired of people pretending movies like this are good it’s ok you don’t have to lie we all know u either didnt really pay attention while watching it and then convinced yourself u liked it because u think it makes u seem more sophisticated and artistic or ur a fucking sicko <3
Review by Mani ★★½

Not what I expected kinda pointless but so pretty
Review by Jonathan Falk ★★★★★

I was already satisfied for this ethereal, psychosexual fairy tale to be conveyed through the stylish watercolor stills with snap zooms and pans to produce a heightened picture-book narrative. (The use of long pans across one long horizontal still is used to incredible effect here, which dispenses with motion as a means of conveying transformation through time.) But when the images become animated, they do so as if possessed by the devil himself, imbued with an agonizing erotic beauty. There is no better testament to how animation is black magic than this movie.
Review by Jesse ★★★★½

i did not think to wear headphones when watching this so i’m telling you now to wear headphones when watching this
Review by bigotedechicha ★★★

sinceramente, la belleza visual de la película es suficiente para entretenerme. la historia es bastante inconexa pero pienso que no se puede esperar mucha cohesión en ese aspecto, dado el género al que pertenece la película.
Review by ratsberry ★★

beautiful animation but not enough to cover up how disturbing and quite pointless this movie was
Review by ann

Avrei dovuto lasciare gli anni 70 dove stavano.
I giapponesi are back at it.
*Yotobi's voice* Penih PENIH PENIH
Avete avuto la mia completa attenzione fino all'intermezzo 70's rock psichedelico
Poi mi avete persa totale ai peni volanti e agli altri pezzi psichedelici cringini tota anni 70 da incubo
Not all men ma tutti i cishet in sto film sicuramente
La mia signora e padrona Jeanne meritava di meglio maledetti
We are all Jeanne, alla fine ho urlato
Ora ho bisogno del sert
Review by PunpunOnodera95 ★★★★★

The devil is an actual dick.
Review by azabelaa ★★★

Mais uma narrativa sobre estrupo e abuso sexual que acaba violentando a vítima por si só com a forma como decide abordar a temática. Todo o potencial narrativo e estético do filme sucumbe a uma impressão quase que fetichista do abuso, porque aparentemente é impossível propor uma arte rica e inventiva que seja pioneira em suas estratégias plásticas sem um olhar masculino explorador que reduza o abuso a apenas uma situação estética.