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An Exercise In Nonsense

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I saw the 1 hour version shown on TCM. I'll like to see the 78 minute restoration as this version has no inter titles, no translation of signs and missing a third of the film. Now, back then a benshi would live narrate so there wouldn't be titles but do they have a copy of what the benshi said during the film (if anything)? I would read a synopsis before watching as it makes things clearer. The plot is hard to follow, some of it is from the POV of crazy people or the dream of the protagonist. Well worth watching but more for admiration than enjoyment.

...until, of course, you've seen it, at which point it instantly vaults to the first rank of silents along with Greed, The Crowd, Man With a Movie Camera, Nosferatu, and so forth. I don't want to give away too much--a great deal of pleasure will be derived from a 'cold' viewing of A Page of Madness--but let's just say it's one of the most radical films of the 1920s. So far ahead of its time that it remains revelatory and utterly contemporary eighty years on, it anticipates much of twentieth century avant garde and experimental cinema whilst also managing to tell a story that is completely captivating. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa is best known for his 1953 drama Gate of Hell, but his lengthy hundred-film plus resume extends back to the early '30s and surely harbors some other gems. Presumably and sadly, most of them are probably lost--if I'm wrong, someone please point me towards more!

The story is admittedly hard to follow. There are no intertitles and it would have originally been narrated by a benshi. But the relative lack of narrative (and don't get me wrong, there is a discernible plot) only adds to the unsettling, off-kilter nature of the film. It's one of the most dizzying, delirious depictions of insanity I've seen, with haunting and bizarre imagery around every corner, an almost complete breakdown of the wall between subjective and objective reality... and a reminder that, in a way, all cinema is a form of madness. The variety and level of technique on display is not only impressive, but used appropriately. The avant-garde 1971 score makes for brilliant accompaniment as well. It's an exhilarating piece of work, both despite and because of its incompleteness.

Hard to find, I saw this in the 1960's in Berkeley, California and even then it seemed dated and yet the Japanese style and film touches that later influenced Kurosawa & Ozu were unmistakable. This is surely the first important Japanese film and the one that influenced the later masters. Simple in story-telling and rich in characterization, even if the acting seems a bit overwrought. Try to find it.