Slideshow
A PAGE OF MADNESS
狂った一頁
♪ WITH LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER
Japan, 1926
Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa
With Masao Inoue, Ayako Iijima, Yoshie Nakagawa, Hiroshi Nemoto, Misao Seki, Minoru Takase
Approx. 71 min. DCP restoration.
“Acted by an avant-garde theater group, conceived and directed by one-time kabuki female impersonator Kinugasa, A PAGE OF MADNESS remains one of the most radical and challenging Japanese movies ever seen here. An old sailor works as a janitor in an asylum to stay close to his insane wife and to help her to escape, except that she doesn't want to go... Kinugasa deploys a battery of expressionist distortions and otherwise stylised images to plunge his audience into 'irrational' experience, always withdrawing to a 'saner' perspective, and then undercutting that with another visual or dramatic shock.” – Time Out
Reviews
“A movie that pushes the expressive and experimental possibilities of silent filmmaking to their limits…The oblique storytelling — there are no intertitles — and innovative editing may make viewers themselves question their sanity.”
– Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times