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MadetmapantGhostFilmToShivertheKwaidanreviewed be-hill.)opens FridayBy Giles M. Fowler(The star's Motion Picture Editor)IN THIS AGE in whichghost films have all but faded away, it is a joy to see a picture that deals unabashedly and often brilliantly with the supernatural. The fum I refer to is “Kwaidan, an eerie trilogy createdin—oi all places—JapanCome to think of it, the national origin of “Kwaidan” should hardly be surprising. Japanese literature is full of horrifying myth and fancy. And what is more, Japan has long had a certain social andenvironmental kinship to thatother island nation. Britain.which has always doted on ghost stories.But even Britain seems to have forsaken the grand tradition in recent years, gearing most of its film efforts to more conventional subjectmatter. While the United States once a big producer of true horror films, has sunk to such depths as the teen-age monster movie and the kind ofnauseous shockers that star faded Hollywood actresses.Well maybe “Kwaidan” will start a quiet revival And even if it doesn't—even if it turns out to be the last of a kind (heaven forbid), it willstand on its own as a superbexample of the genre. For “Kwaidan,” though short of perfect, has four overriding virtues as a film of the supernatural.FIRST, ITS HORRORS are never coarsely blatant, being as implicit as they are explicit. Only toward the end of each story (at least the firsttwo) does the source of horrorbecome strongly literal, andby th^n the viewer has beendriven to a state of mind inwhich he’ll accept anything.Second, each of the tales has an atmosphere akin to theGothic, yet altered ana Orientalized into something quite different and chilling to the Western spine. A midnight rainstorm outside the walls ofa Transylvanian castle is acliche, the same storm beating upon the courtyard of aBuddhist temple creates amuch fresher, more ominous effectThird, while all the “Kwaidan” stories might be said to have deep psychological im-plicat’ons. they are basicallymelodramas designed to giveus a good fright. In other words they are refreshinglyunpretentious.Finally. “Kwaidan” is a technical tour de force, being suDerbly directed by Masaki Kobayashi, magnificently photographed in color and acted with terrifying conviction by a fine cast. In manner and approach it is a wholly Japanese film—lyrical, stylized,Westernfluid and completely balanced and subtle in its artistry.And don’t be misled by the fact that its screenplay is based on tales by a ’Western-born writer, Latcadio Hearn. Hearn was an expatriate toJapan and a scholar of thatcountry s folklore which hemust have drawn upon heavily for the substance of histhree stories.THE FIRST OF THEM, “Black Hair,” is much the most compact and simple, andhappens to be mv favorite. It is so simple, in fact, that I risk divulging too much even by noting that it involves a haunted houseThe tale is set in Kyoto about a thousand years ago. It centers on an impoverished samurai who divorces his loving wife and takes up with a willful rich-bitch who can advance him socially. But guilt and memories keep gnawingat him, and after a while . . . there, I’ve told enough. Let me just add, in passing, that a handsome Japanese town house, fallen into dereliction, can be more terrifying than the most decayed Victorian mansion.Arts EnterTHE KANSAS CITY STARSunday, FebruaryEditorials1966The second story, “Hoiehi,the Earless,” is a horror taleof epic proportions—maybe a bit too epic, for it seems to run about 15 minutes too long. Strongly infused with legend and history, it actuallydepicts two time periods—the 19th century or thereabouts, inwhich the main action transpires, and about 700 years earlier, when a certain mur-4 derous sea battle took place between two great clans.Hoichi, a blind temple musician, is an expert at singing the ballad-song of the ancient war. (As he sings, the fight comes to life before our eyes —a stylized clash between terrible and heroic figures on a bloody sea beneath a blood-streaked sky.) Then one night, a stranger appears at Hoichi’s temple and takes him away to repeat his song before a mysterious audience. And this, in turn, leads to a bizarre ordeal for the young musician—an ordeal that frightens through the sheer grandeur and poetic breadth of its telling.If “Black Hair” is close to the Western style of ghost fiction, and “Hoichi” tends toward the grand and theatrical (even to the use of twoSection GARTBOOKSDININGMOVIESMUSICRECORDSSTAGE• «• •»medoltish servants for comic effect), the third tale, “In a Cup of Tea,” is strictly Oriental in concept and execution.It considers the question of what happens when one man“drinks the soul” of another. As if this idea weren’t hard enough to swallow, the tale is made even muddier by the fact that no psychic explanations are offered for the action, Thus one of the groundrules of conventional ghoststories has been broken. Thus too, for all its fearsome moments, the story is the most obscure of the three and the least appealing to the Western viewer.OR MAYBE I just wasn’t alert enough to catch all of its mystical subtleties. In any case, the three stories pf “Kwaidan,” taken together, amount to a fascinating entertainment, appealing equally tothe imagination and thesenses.In composing future nightmares for myself, I shall no dou\t borrow elements from all the tales—the final, frantic horror of “Black Hair,” theawesome war spectacles of “Hoichi” (expertly juxtaposed with ancient paintings of thebattle), the ghastly swordplayrr ieiice in the final story, the bluish fogs and diabolical skies that hover over so many scenes, the spare, nerve-twanging music and startlingpercussive effects that fill thesoundtrack.Director Kobayashi, like his countryman, Akira Kurosawa, is a man who knows the whole potential of the movie camera as a narrative and artistic instrument. His sense of composition is flawless, with every frame breathtakingly de-A GHOSTLY LOVE STORY' involving a medieval samurai and his ex-wife (Rcntaro Mikuni and Michiyo Aratama) is the first of three horrific tales recounted in the new Japanese film, “Kwaidan.” The trilogy, adapted by Yoko Mizuki from stories by Lafcadio Hearn, was produced by Shigeru Wakatsuki,directed by Masaki Kobayashi and released in the Continental Distributing division of Walter Reade-Sterling, Inc.signed. His cross-cutting inone passage of “Dark Hair” isas brilliant as any I’ve seen. And his flow of images contains a rhythmic lyricism and perfection of pacing that fewW e s t e r n directors could match.Moreover, Kobayashi has a theatrical sense and a feelingfor style that lend his work analmost choreographic quality, sustained by the uniform grace and physical eloquence of his players.Certain writers—HenrvJames and Algernon Blackwood, for instance—have longsince demonstrated that ghost stories can be especially effective if told with great beauty.Kobayashi has made the samepoint in cinematic terms, andI am grateful to him.
Newspaper Details
Kansas City Star
Kansas City, Missouri, US
Sun, Feb 27, 1966
Page 133
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 22 Jun 2020
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