User:Paleface Jack/A Page of Madness

A Page of Madness
Japanese name
Katakana	狂つた一頁
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn Kurutta ichipeiji
Directed by	Teinosuke Kinugasa
Screenplay by	Yasunari Kawabata Teinosuke Kinugasa Minoru Inuzuka Banko Sawada
Story by	Yasunari Kawabata
Produced by	Teinosuke Kinugasa
Starring	Masao Inoue Yoshie Nakagawa Ayako Iijima
Cinematography	Kōhei Sugiyama Eiji Tsuburaya
Edited by	Teinosuke Kinugasa
Production company	New Sensational Film League
Distributed by	National Art Film Company
Release date	September 24, 1926 (1926-09-24) (Japan)
Running time	79 minutes
Country	Japan
Languages	Japanese (silent; without subtitles)
Budget	¥20,000
Box office	¥7,500

A Page of Madness (Japanese: 狂つた一頁, Hepburn: Kurutta ichipeiji) is a 1926 Japanese silent experimental horror film directed, co-written, produced, and edited by Teinosuke Kinugasa. The film is set in a psychiatric hospital; Masao Inoue stars as an elderly man who gets a job there in an attempt to see his mentally ill wife who became a patient there after experiencing a traumatic affair. Produced by the New Sensational Film League, it is Japan's first full-scale avant-garde film and was created by a group of artists, known as the Shinkankakuha, who tried to overcome naturalistic representation.

A Page of Madness was conceived by Kinugasa after visiting Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital and he subsequently co-wrote the script with Yasunari Kawabata, Minoru Inuzuka, and Banko Sawada; Kawabata also wrote the story treatment in April, which was later published in a film magazine. Principal photography took place at Shochiku Kyoto Studio, beginning with an incomplete script on May 6th and concluding on May 31st. Kinugasa completed the film and took it to Tokyo on June 6th.

Because film company Shochiku Kinema was reluctant to screen A Page of Madness in their theaters, Kinugasa instead sold the film to several theaters and companies in Tokyo himself. National Art Film Company eventually released the film in several theaters nationwide on September 24th. Critics praised the avant-garde and advanced artistry, but many criticized its lack of intertitles and found it difficult to understand. The film earned ¥7,500 against its ¥20,000 budget, becoming a box-office bomb for failing to break even and leading to the dissolution of the New Sensational Film League.

After its release, the film was long believed to have been lost, but on New Year's Day 1971, Kinugasa accidentally discovered a positive and negative print of the film in some rice cans at his storehouse. Kinugasa himself then re-edited and produced a "new sound version" of the film with background music by Minoru Muraoka, which was first screened at Iwanami Hall on October 10, 1975, as a double feature with Kinugasa's Crossroads (1928). Shortly after its rediscovery, the film had its premiere foreign screenings in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where it obtained widespread acclaim. A Page of Madness has gained a cult following, and is now widely considered a monumental film in the history of world cinema, and among the best Japanese, horror, avant-garde, and silent films of all time.

Plot

Amid a torrential rainstorm late one night, a patient at a psychiatric hospital dances wildly as if she is possessed. The elderly custodian stares at a mentally ill woman held inside a cell, who is revealed to be his wife, but she does not recognize him due to her condition. Formerly a sailor, he frequently left his wife and daughter alone to go on long voyages at sea, causing his wife to become mentally unstable. She became a patient at the hospital after an attempt to kill herself and their child. The old man feels remorseful and works at the hospital to watch over his wife, unknown to everyone else at the clinic.

The next morning, the couple's daughter visits the hospital to report her upcoming marriage but is shocked and angry when she learns that her father works at the hospital. Her daughter heads to her hospital room, but she is disappointed in her unresponsive mother and leaves the hospital, unable to forgive her father for driving her mother crazy. A morning examination is held at the hospital, and the janitor asks the doctor who is examining his wife about her condition, but he does not respond. The janitor later reunites with her daughter, asking her for forgiveness, and asks about her engagement. The wife, who was allowed to take a morning walk, quietly looked at the sky as she walked on the lawn, and the servant and her daughter watched from a distance. The brief moment of peace is interrupted when an inmate attempts to attack the daughter, causing her to flee from the hospital.

Sometime later, one of the patients begins dancing, exciting the others, who begin to cheer her on. In the ensuing commotion, one of the patients accidentally hits the janitor's wife and a fight ensues, the hospital staff soon manage to stop the brawl, with the head doctor reprimanding the janitor for his actions. These events cause the janitor to experience a number of fantasies, as he slowly loses control of the border between dreams and reality. He first has a daydream about winning a chest of drawers in a lottery that he could give to his daughter as part of her dowry. When his daughter comes to tell him that her marriage is in trouble, he thinks about taking his wife away from the asylum to hide her existence. He also fantasizes about killing the head doctor, but the vision gets out of hand as a bearded inmate is seen marrying his daughter.

The janitor finally dreams of distributing noh masks to the inmates, providing them with happy faces while he dons an okina (old man) mask. Later the janitor is shown once again mopping the floors of the asylum, no longer able to visit his wife's ward because he lost the keys (picked up by the doctor). He sees the bearded inmate pass by, who bows to him for the first time, as if bowing to his father-in-law.

Cast

• Masao Inoue as the Janitor
• Yoshie Nakagawa as the Janitor's wife
• Ayako Iijima as the Janitor's daughter
• Hiroshi Nemoto as the fiancé
• Misao Seki as the chief doctor
• Minoru Takase as patient A
• Eiko Minami as the dancer
• Kinnosuke Takamatsu as patient B, the bearded inmate
• Tetsu Tsuboi as patient C
• H. E. Aldenborg as a foreign doctor
• Shintarō Takiguchi as the gateman's son (uncredited)
• Umeko Akimoto as a patient (uncredited)

Cast taken from Aaron Gerow's 2008 book A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan, except where cited otherwise.

Production

Development

Potential images: Kinugasa and Yokomitsu

In October 1925, filmmaker Teinosuke Kinugasa started working on a film adaption of the novella Nichirin, written by novelist Riichi Yokomitsu. During the process of adapting the material, Kinugasa became acquainted with Yokomitsu. Nichirin was ultimately canceled at the discretion of Shōzō Makino, due to rising protests by Japanese right wing groups who were against production of the film. Discouraged by the experience, Kinugasa left Makino's company Makino Productions, who was co-creating the film with Yokomitsu's company United Film Artists Association, and decided to establish his own film company in order to produce an independent film, a rare occurrence in the Japanese film industry at the time. On his leaving Makino to pursue independent production, Kinugasa later stated: "I want[ed] to make films freely without being criticized by anyone." New Sensational (Shinkankakuha) Film League was founded on April 10, by Kawabata, Kataoka Teppei, Kunio Kishida, and Shinzaburo Ikeya, with the intention to combat what they felt was naturalistic representation.

In order to start making films independently without assistance from the mainstream Japanese film industry, an acquaintance of Kinugasa, a young German man named Aldenborg, purchased a 35 mm camera or Parvo in Shanghai at the price of ¥4,000. The camera, a Balbo K model, had four lenses and could load four hundred feet of film, was used for the resulting production. Kinugasa also set up an editing studio at his home in Kyoto, while additionally renting a vacant lot in a tea plantation near his home, which served as his production studio. Throughout this time, Kinugasa began developing a potential outline for his company's first production, envisioning a story centered on an old man in a circus. To that effect, he hired a traveling circus for a month, building a 'circus tent' on the studio lot where he began filming scenes of the troupe.

Writing

Potential images: Matsuzawa Hospital and Kawabata

Development for A Page of Madness began in March 1926, shortly after the founding of New Sensational. The original story of the old man and the circus was initially shelved by Kinugasa after his meeting with Yokomitsu and Yasunari Kawabata. After the initial meeting, Kishida, who was free at the time, wrote up a scenario titled Mainspring Play (ゼンマイの戯れ, Zenmai no Tawamure) over a period of two days. This project was planned to be a minor comedy along the lines of French satire, about a salaryman who is a patent enthusiast, but they abandoned the project, deeming it to be unsuitable. Kinugasa and Kawabata then brainstormed various ideas while confining themselves at a Japanese inn in the Shinbashi district of Minato, Tokyo, in order to conceive potential ideas for a film, though these all proved to be unsatisfactory.

The story idea that eventually developed into A Page of Madness was inspired by an event in Kinugasa's life. In his 1977 book, Kinugasa recalled that, while leaving a train station on the way to visit Yokomitsu's house, he encountered a group of nobles, with one claiming that he was mentally ill. This encounter intrigued Kinugasa, who decided to visit Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Setagaya where the self-proclaimed "emperor", Kinjirō Ashiwara, had been admitted. Upon seeing the patients there, Kinugasa conceived the idea of the film; he later consulted with Yokomitsu and Kawabata that night and they decided to set the film in a mental health hospital. Due to personal issues, Yokomitsu and Teppei were unable to participate in writing the story treatment for the film. Kawabata took on the task and stayed at an inn, developing a story outline over the course of his stay.

Writing of the film's script and story would continue through the start of filming, with Kawabata handing completed pages over to Kinugasa in Tokyo in order for Kinugasa to begin adapting it into a workable script during shooting. On writing the story, Kawabata stated: "I should have arrived in Kyoto before filming started, and I was ready to be blamed for being irresponsible as I delayed it for nearly ten days". While Kinugasa believed that shooting with an incomplete script would not be problematic, he recommended that it should be ready for post-production in order to piece the film together. After Kinugasa received the half-finished story treatment, he and scriptwriter Banko Sawada, adapted it into a screenplay; their shooting script and the shooting memo were subsequently used for filming, but during the production, Kinugasa, Kawabata, Sawada, and Minoru Inuzuka held a meeting regarding the script and resumed writing it.

Inuzuka later claimed in his autobiography Film is Like a Heat Haze that Yokomitsu and Kataoka also penned the script in Kyoto. However, literary researcher Hirokazu Toeda declared that there are no existing records that suggest Yokomitsu ever went to Kyoto to work on the script and that, even if he did co-create the screenplay, it would have been difficult for him to leave his sickened wife alone in Tokyo for a long period of time. Likewise, film critic Inuhiko Yomota also questioned Inuzuka's remark, citing that Inuzuka was aged 101 at the time when stating this. Scholar Atsushi Koyano stated that some scholars have nevertheless accepted Inuzuka's assertion that Yokomitsu and Kataoka were also involved, but not necessarily conveyed that his testimony is conceivable. Once filming was completed, Kawabata made additions and corrections based on the shooting script and notes, compiling it into a story outline which was published in the first issue of Eiga Jidai.

Casting

Potential images: Inoue, Nakagawa and Minami

Kinugasa had always intended for the part of the "Janitor" to go to stage actor Masao Inoue, who was considered one of the top Japanese stage actors in the world around that time. Both men had previously worked together on stage and were well acquainted with one another, with Kinugasa personally requesting Inoue for the film's lead role. Inoue was reportedly amused by Kinugasa's attempt to make an artistic film regardless of profitability and agreed to appear free of charge. Before filming began, Inoue had modified his appearance by plucking his forehead and thinning his hair so as to appear significantly older as the role required. Kawabata later recalled being surprised upon seeing the actor's new appearance for the film, stating that Inoue was unrecognizable: "there was no trace of his true face".

The role of the "Dancer" was originally given to butoh dancer Emiko Suda, at the suggestion of Kawabata. Before production began, Suda was forced to drop out of production due to scheduling conflicts with an upcoming Butoh performance. Then 15-year-old chorus girl Eiko Minami was subsequently hired as Suda's replacement also serving as her acting and dancing debut. After the film's release, Minami presided over a dance research institute, working on various creative dances, becoming a well-known performer of the emerging butoh world.

Many of the other performers in the film were acquaintances of Kinugasa and Inoue. H. E. Aldenborg, who assisted Kinugasa with procuring film equipment, appeared in the brief role of the foreign doctor in the hospital. Mitsujo Takase, who was a member of Kinugasa's Nikkatsu Mukojima studio, portrayed one of the residents of the mental hospital. Shintarō Takiguchi, also a member of Inoue's stage group, appeared in a minor role as the Gateman's son, alongside his pet dog.

Filming

Potential images: Kinugasa during production and Tsuburaya

Principal photography began on May 6, 1926, on a budget of ¥20,000. It was originally intended for the film to be shot at the vacant lot of the tea plantation, however, changes in the film's story, which continued throughout filming, made it no longer possible. In his autobiography, Kinugasa stated that Shochiku executive Shintaro Shirai, who had read a newspaper article on the New Sensational Film League, gave him and his crew freedom to using their neglected Shimogamo Studio in Kyoto in order to shoot the entire film. The film's crew consisted of about seventy individuals, with Kinugasa and the staff camping in the actor's room at the studio throughout filming. The majority of the crew assembled to create the film were men in their twenties, with a desire to innovate a new kind of movie.

Filming continued over a period of twenty-five days, with Kinugasa and the crew working tirelessly throughout to produce the film. Since Inoue was only available until the end of May, the schedule was extremely tight, with Kinugasa and his colleagues often working throughout the night. Members of the cast and crew who were available usually fulfilled multiple roles during production, Inoue himself would assist in handling props and performing other miscellaneous tasks. During the filming of the lottery scene, in which many actresses playing the role of girls with Japanese hairstyles appeared, the hairdressers in the town were too busy to call because the Aoi Festival was being held, so Yoshie Nakagawa, who portrayed the Janitor's wife, ended up working as the actress' hair stylist. Eight days after production started, Kawabata entered the studio and remained onset for roughly ten days. During this period, Kawabata became an important member of the crew, observing filming, participating in scripting discussions, and suggesting masks for the patients in the film's climax. He later wrote about his on-set experience in the May 30th of Weekly Asahi and August issue of Plays and Movies.

Cinematography was provided by Kōhei Sugiyama, who would later collaborate with Kinugasa on several other films, notably his award-winning 1953 film Gate of Hell. Future special effects innovator Eiji Tsuburaya assisted photography on the picture, exploring various filming methods such as shaking the camera all directions using a pan stick; this would later lead to Tokusatsu (special effects) techniques. According to biographer August Ragone, Tsuburaya also had many other important positions in the film, including assistant directing.

Many of the film's sets were constructed by hand because of the film's low budget. The studio itself was actually a glass stage composed of glass walls in order to shoot with natural light in the daytime, and the lighting equipment was inadequate with only about eight used carbon lights. In order to make up for this insufficient lighting, Kinugasa and his colleagues placed washi paper on the walls of the set and applied silver powder on it to improve the reflection of light. Wanting the walls to stand out in a three-dimensional effect, sets were then hand-painted oil smoke acquired from a nearby public bath, with Inoue helping out. Some portions of the set, such as the hospital's iron bars and doors were real, allowing the actors to give realistic performances without worrying about breaking the constructed sets. Scenes outside the psychiatric hospital, including the town and raffle scenes, were filmed near Shimogamo Studios. For the heavy rain scene at the beginning, the crew attempted to create artificial rain themselves with their own water supply. The "rain" appeared unsatisfactory, Kinugasa asked for help from the local fire department, using their fire hose to create the artificial rain needed for the scene. Filming was subsequently completed within a period of twenty-five days.

Post-production

Editing for the film was completed by Kinugasa during principle photography, in order to work around Inoue's limited availability. Completed footage was edited each day by Kinugasa, who compiled the resulting shots based on "the feel of the shots".

A Page of Madness is one of few films that attempts to avoid the use of intertitles (title cards) of spoken dialogue or description that characterize most silent films, in the belief that the visuals themselves should carry most of the meaning. At the beginning of production, several subtitles were inserted to indicate the characters and date/time settings, during the preview stage it was suggested by Yokomitsu to forgo them entirely, something that was agreed upon by Kinugasa. The film is not the first to attempt telling a narrative without subtitles, German films such as Lupu Pick's New Year's Eve (1924), and F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) had already begun to explore the medium through an entirely visual perspective. In particular, Murnau's film had a lasting impact on Japanese cinema when it was screened in the country in September 1924, and many would advocate for abolishing subtitles, with the argument that subtitles were an impurity that hindered the use of cinematic discourse. Kinugasa stated in the October 1926 issue of Bungei Jidai that he liked The Last Laugh so much that he watched it five times in a survey entitled "My ideal movie".

Developing a complex story without subtitles in a way that the audience could understand was noticeably difficult, as a result, the intention of not including subtitles was not originally attempted. The screening of the film was accompanied by an explanation by a benshi, which was the usual screening format for Japanese films at the time. The acting benshi functioned as an in-house narrator, explaining to the audience the meaning of the film, such as the location and the history of the main character, which could not be understood from the images alone. Although pursuing the 'purity of the image' without subtitles, the fact that it was screened with an explanation by a benshi to ensure the audience's understanding made the film even more 'impure', and the release of the film was criticized.

Style

As avant-garde

A Page of Madness is widely regarded as Japan's first full-fledged avant-garde film, one heavily influenced by the European avant-garde movement. During the time of the film's release, avant-garde art movements had grown increasingly popular in Europe, with the art form making a successful transition into film with the French Impressionist and German Expressionist films. The film corresponds with the trends of these avant-garde film movements and is an attempt to break down the conventional wisdom of Japanese film narratives, establishing a new form cinematic expression that had only appeared in foreign films in Japan at the time. The film also represents an advance in Japanese cinema, with Kinugasa attempting to fully realize the possibility of visual expression while making full use of various cinematic techniques. Kinugasa himself has stated that he fully experimented with cinematic expression and film technology by making full use of the camera while working on the film. While attempting this kind of experiment, the film blurs the lines between fantasy, reality, and time, creating an unreliable narrative through the chaotic interweaving of sanity and madness. For this reason, the film progresses through a form of non-traditional narration, making it difficult to understand the story. This was done intentionally by Kinugasa, as the story only has a secondary meaning, and the progression of imagery being the primary focus.

Purity of visual expression

A Page of Madness shares a visual style with several art film movements, specifically the French "cinéma pur" and German "absolute film", both classified as an aesthetic of cinematic film that contains no narrative, which were popular in Japan at the time. Within these two film movements, certain filmmakers had grown disillusioned with the set "rules" of cinematic storytelling, and attempts were made to eliminate elements such as storytelling and acting that were said to have been borrowed from literature and theater. The primary focus on both movements was to have the cinematic medium be purely one of 'visual expression'. Films such as Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique (1924), and Man Ray 's Emak Bakia (1926) among others developed their works based on the movement and rhythm of images without a narrative. During the 1920s, theories of pure and absolute film were introduced in film magazines across Japan, leading some filmmakers to create their own works based on the art form.

As a result, the film attempts to pursue its thin-narrative structure through imagery. Visual elements, such as the images of dancers whose reflections are greatly distorted by convex and concave mirrors appear from the subjective perspective of the servant's wife, and this can also be seen in works such as Ekma Bakia, which uses geometric movement as its material. The direction is the same as that of an experimental attempt to separate images from the representation of reality as much as possible, reducing them to visually abstract figures. The abstract graphic image of a rotating ring and a vertical line that divides it (see Themes), which frequently appears in the film, is also reminiscent of the influence of Cubism and Dadaism, which influenced pure and absolute films. Literary critic Ryota Fukushima referred to this visual technique as an "Apollo-like sense of form". Furthermore, in the opening scene in which an inmate dances wildly, and the scene in the middle where other patients watch the dance and get excited, Fukushima says, "The movement of a woman who seems to have lost her sense of self is depicted in an inorganic way". The film depicts a Dionysian scene in which the madness infects the surroundings while simultaneously showing the object, he points out that the sequence corresponds to attempts to make ballet's movement itself appear as visual performance, without subordinating it to realism, drama, or narrative.

Influences

A Page of Madness is known for its similarities to that of German Expressionist and French impressionist cinema. In the 1920s, the genre of German Expressionism exploded in popularity with the release of Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a film which used exaggerated shapes and lighting to emphasize light and shadow, creating a dark atmosphere of anxiety and chaos. Caligari was released in Japan in 1921, becoming a big topic of conversation, leading to the popularity of foreign expressionist films, a genre that later influenced Japanese films. Literary researcher Yoshiki Kuritssubo would describe this influence on the style of the film, referring to it as "in the vein of German Expressionist films."

A Page of Madness is frequently compared to Caligari; the films share a similar narrative, with both being set within a mental institution and the main narrative depicting the fantasies of an unreliable and mentally unbalanced narrator. As film researcher Kikuo Yamamoto stated, the film "develops a Caligari-esque world of madman's fantasies". Sato has argued that, while some of the subject matter and expressions of this work are influenced by Caligari, the results obtained from it are completely different. Elaborating on this, Sato explained that while Caligari emphasizes a sense of anxiety, Kinugasa's film emphasizes themes of domestic tragedy. In contrast, Film Quarterly's Robert Cohen argued that, while Kinugasa's film shared many similarities with Caligari, there was no suggestion within the film's narrative to support the assumption that it was told through the eyes of its main character. According to Justin Bowyer, Kinugasa himself listed Caligari as a major influence on the film. Nonetheless, film historian Mariann Lewinsky said the film's comparisons to Dr Caligari are "quite pointless I think", expressing that film is "too different in its mood and making, and its treatment of madness has nothing in common with A Page of Madness".

The use of lighting to emphasize the contrast between light and dark, or light and shadow, characteristic of German Expressionist films, is used as one of the characteristic expressive techniques by Kinugasa. Yomota argues that in scenes such as when a servant sneaks into a hospital ward, only the shadow of the person is shown, and then the real person appears, making it seem as if the shadow is a being of its own will. This technique of shadows appearing independently of the main body can be seen in expressionist films such as Murnau's Faust (1926), in which shadows appear independently of the main body. He points out that this is the same method used to make it appear that he is acting as another character with his own will.

French impressionism would also gain exposure in Japan around the same time, films by Abel Gance and Jaque Catelain, in addition to Léon Moussinac's film theory, helped the genre rise in popularity, providing additional influence in the development of Japanese cinema. The genre, characterized by the use of new cinematic techniques to express the characters' impressions and emotions, such as memories, thoughts, and fantasies, rather than the story itself, and in particular to express emotional turmoil. French impressionism is also known for its creation of the editing technique called "flash," which rhythmically connects short shots. The beginning of the film uses the flash technique, with a series of short shots depicting a hospital in heavy rain and dancing dancers, in order to emphasize a sense of urgency.

Author and film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas pointed out the influence of early stage traditions, such as the Italian commedia dell'arte, upon the film's thematic and stylistic elements. Specifically, the character of the janitor is shown to mirror that of the traditional Vecchio, or "Old Man" commonly a stock character found in commedia dell'arte. In traditional plays the Vecchio commonly has a daughter (Innamorati whom they generally attempt to thwart the reunification between them and their lover (zanni). Heller-Nicholas further wrote the Japanese Noh theatre as an additional influence upon the films thematic elements.

Themes

Critics have identified several primary themes in A Page of Madness. It is cited as the first Japanese film set in a psychiatric hospital, exploring mental health conditions, and portraying the sequences inside it realistically. It further depicts the power in a mental hospital, the repression and confinement of patients, and the patients who resist and is a typical example of the "modern ideological apparatus" carried by hospitals, as film critic Inuhiko Yomota wrote, the conflicting systems of confinement and release, treatment, and punishment are given a keen social look. The theme of the rotating circle appears repeatedly in the films as an allegory for ideas such as vicious cycles, fate, self-closure, and infinity. Examples of this include the opening scene where the patients dance in a hospital during heavy rain, the image of a circle proliferates, with the wheels riding through the rain, the huge sphere behind the inmates, and the inmates' spinning dance. In contrast, the image of "cold vertical lines" such as the iron bars and lattice doors of hospital rooms emerged as a force that restricts and suppresses the rotation of the circle, an embodiment of the principle of the psychiatric hospital itself.

The focus and theme of family tragedy is one of the film's most predominant themes, a common focus of classic Shinpa tragedies, that was commonly explored within the mainstream of modern drama in Japanese film and theater at the time. Described as "a combination of innovative methods and sentimental melodrama" by author Inuhiko Yomota, elements and themes of Japanese family melodramas have been highlighted as one of the films interweaving themes.

Release

Theatrical screenings

Once Kinugasa had completed editing the film, the footage was then taken to Tokyo by Kinugasa on June 6. While there, Kinugasa arranged for a private screening of the film with Yokomitsu at the Hayama Hospital where Yokomitsu was caring for his wife. Initially, Kinugasa and Yokomitsu intended to screen the film to patients in the hospital, but decided against the idea, instead, renting a nearby movie theater after the screening ended and previewing it late that night. Since this film was an independent film in which the director also served as a producer, it was more difficult to secure screening routes than films produced by regular film companies. Subsequently, theaters run by the company Shochiku were also reluctant to show the film as a part of their own line of films. While in Tokyo, Kinugasa personally went to movie theaters and film companies to promote the film. A Page of Madness was initially previewed at the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun head office on June 17, 1926, and it passed the censorship of the Ministry of Home Affairs on June 22nd.

The film was later publicly screened at the Aoyama Kaikan in Tokyo on July 10th. Newspaper advertisements at the time introduced Kinugasa as "Japan's Josef von Sternberg". On the same day as Musashinokan's screening, it was also released at the American film company Paramount Pictures's Tokyo wing in Asakusa and Shochikuza Districts in Osaka, with explanations given by benshi Ishii Omi and Tamai Kyohiro at the Tokyo wing. It was also screened at the theaters Shinjuku Musashinokan, Tokyo Club, and Osaka Shochikuza on September 24th, Kinema Club in Kobe on October 1, and at Shochiku Shochikuza in Kyoto on October 8th. The film was distributed by the National Art Film Company (according to the National Film Archive of Japan), while Honjō Film Distribution Company released it in the Kantō region (according to Aaron Gerow). In September, about three months after completion, Akira Iwasaki, a member of the planning committee that selected works to be screened at Shinjuku Musashinokan, a foreign film museum that screened artistic works, saw a preview screening of the film at Nikkatsu's headquarters. Impressed, Iwasaki proposed showing the film at a committee meeting. At the time Japanese films were not shown at Musashinokan; Iwasaki said, "It was such a far-fetched proposal that it was unlikely that it would be accepted". Iwasaki Mori, a member of the committee who had been working on the film, and Musashinokan's chief orator, Musei Tokugawa, agreed, and with Iwasaki's strong recommendation. The screening at Musashinokan was held for one week from September 24th, and Tokugawa, a popular benshi, was in charge of giving explanations. Many of the theaters screening the film were foreign theaters, and most of them also screened American films. These theaters would treat the film as being on par with other high-end foreign films, something that was unheard of for Japanese films at the time.

Although A Page of Madness achieved decent box-office results, Musashinokan's release of the film was not the huge success the company was hoping for, earning only ¥1,500. Box office results at other movie theaters were poor, and at a time when Japanese movies at the time made a profit by being shown at many movie theaters in Japan over several months, the film was only screened at a limited amount of theaters. In comparison to the production cost of over ¥20,000, the film was a box office bomb, resulting in a loss of over ¥10,000. While Kinugasa was busy promoting the film during its release in Tokyo, the staff from his production company believed that Kinugasa would continue to produce the film and waited at a training camp in Kyoto. Proceeds were paid each time the film was released and screened, subsequently the commission rate would increase during this time, making it difficult to send money to the production staff. Kinugasa planned to produce and direct several other projects, however, none came to fruition. As a result of both the poor financial returns for A Page of Madness and failure to secure any more funding for future projects, the New Sensational Film League (Shinsensaku Eiga Renmei) was disbanded with the film as its only output.

Rediscovery and modern screenings

The only known print of A Page of Madness was believed to have been destroyed by a fire that broke out in the film warehouse at Shochiku Kyoto Studio in 1950 and thus it was considered a lost film thereafter. By that time the only information available to western audiences was its mention in the book The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, published in 1959 by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie. Twenty-seven years later, on New Year's Day 1971, Kinugasa discovered prints of the film by accident in some rice cans at his storehouse. According to Kinugasa's autobiography, Kashiko Kawakita had asked him about the whereabouts of the first issue of the film magazine Cinema Close Up which Kinugasa had founded, and while looking for it in the storehouse of his home in Kyoto, he discovered a tin rice box housing film canisters of the film's negative and positive prints, which were in perfect condition.

Kinugasa himself re-edited the film, producing a "sound version" with new music by Minoru Muraoka and Nobu Kurashima. To properly reproduce the sound recorded on the film, the projection speed was set at the standard projection speed for sound film, rather than the original projection speed of 18 frames per second. As a result, the running time has been shortened from the original seventy-nine minutes to fifty-nine minutes, and the movement of the images appears at a faster pace. In addition, regarding the screen size when projected on the screen during projection, the New Sound version removes the soundtrack cue from the original frame, and also trims the top and bottom of the frame to adjust to the standard size. As a result, there are some missing parts in the video compared to the original.

On April 27, 1971, a special preview of the New Sound version was held at Iwanami Hall in Tokyo, with Kawabata, assistant director Eiichi Koishi, philosophers Tetsuzō Tanikawa and Yoichi Kono, social psychologist Hiroshi Minami, novelist Hiroshi Noma. On October 10, 1975, it was screened again at Iwanami Hall as the 5th road show of "Equipe de Cinéma", which screens the world's hidden masterpieces, along with Kinugasa's Crossroads (1928). It was released and ran until November 3rd. The following year, in March of 1976, an encore screening was held at the same hall, and in August 1982, a memorial screening for Kinugasa, who passed away in that year, was held again in conjunction with Crossroads.

The film was screened in England from circa April to June 1973, as a double feature with Blood of the Condor (1969). On April 25, 1975, the film was screened alongside the German film Fata Morgana (1971), as part of the New Line Cinema Festival, a film festival presenting acclaimed foreign films in the U.S. which took place from April 25-27.

At the 63rd annual conference of the International Federation of Film Archives, which was held in April 2007, Yūji Takahashi provided music for the restored 35mm print of the film. The film was also screened at several festivals outside of Japan during the 2000s and 2010s, including: the Nippon Connection Film Festival on April 4, 2008; the Philadelphia Film Festival in October 2010; Jazz day in Lyon on May 2, 2015; the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on June 3, 2017; the Syros International Film Festival on July 19, 2017; the L'Étrange Festival on September 17, 2017; Camera Japan Festival on September 24, 2017; the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival on October 17, 2017; the International Film Festival Rotterdam on February 2, 2018; and Ebertfest on April 20, 2018. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival sceening featured live music played by the Alloy Orchestra, who also performed live during a screening of the film at Film at Lincoln Center on June 19, 2018. The Flushing Remonstrance performed live during the film's screening at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in October 2023. On December 15, 2023, the film was screened at Japan Society alongside Grass Labyrinth. Grass Labyrinth A restored print of the film will be screened as part of the global silent film tour known as "The Art of the Benshi" in April 2024.

In 2021, it was discovered by Akane Nohara of Imagica EMS that the 35mm print of the film found at Kinugasa residence (labeled as the black and white print) had actually been dyed blue. Thus, Nohara and his team, excited by the discovery, began restorating this print of the film.

Home media

Flicker Alley released A Page of Madness on DVD with Henwar Rodakiewicz's Portrait of a Young Man in June 2017. In March 2018, Lobster Films released the film on DVD in France, with French subtitles. A 71-minute 16mm print of the film, accompanied by new music composed by Alloy Orchestra, is available for rent on Flicker Alley's website.

Reception

Contemporaneous

Despite initially being deemed a commercial failure, A Page of Madness was highly anticipated and received overwhelmingly positive reactions from film critics and experts, who particularly praised its avant-garde and sophisticated artistry. It was ranked 4th in the film magazine Kinema Junpo's list of best ten Japanese films of 1926. In May 1927, the year after its release, it was designated an "outstanding film" by the All Kansai Film Association, and Kawabata was presented with a medal and a certificate for his efforts.

Junpo critic Akira Iwasaki called it "the first world-class movie made in Japan" and raved about "the beauty [Kinugasa] depicts is by no means dramatic, novel, or painterly; it is a beauty that has nothing to do with any established art." Aoto Tonoshima of Chūkyō Kinema said, "If ordinary movie dramas are common sense, this one is more than common sense, it transcends common sense... It's a sensual movie that is based on humanity and logic.". He added "It's a work that tries to express the film itself, which has no use for values such as seriousness or seriousness," and compared it to Western films, saying, "It's a step more advanced than [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]." The deftness of the camera work rivals that of [The Last Laugh]." Eiichi Kato of the same magazine commented, "It occupies a position where it can essentially replace the value of conventional Japanese films. A review of the film in Tokyo Nichiichi Shimbun remarked, "It is horribly advanced compared to traditional novel-like storytelling, or explanatory films," and said that it was a Japanese film that relied on traditional linguistic elements. Unlike the previous works, he acclaimed the film for composing images without relying heavily on language. Kan Kikuchi also commented, "I had a good time watching A Page of Madness and was happy that it didn't have the unpleasant aspects of the Japanese film style."

Seikichi Fujimori felt that "the most successful part of this film is the cinematography", especially praising its lighting and shading and saying that "in terms of technique, it seemed to be on par with first-rate European and American films. Yoshio Ishinomaki also remarked on the use of cinematography and lighting: "It's probably no exaggeration to say that the cinematic value of A Page of Madness is determined solely by its cinematography techniques." Junichiro Tanaka also acclaimed the lighting, stating it is reminiscent of expressionist films and expressed his hopes for the impact that the film will have on Japanese art film. Shin Niwa of Chūkyō Kinema also expressed: "It is a figure of dedication that emerges from pure cinema and absolute cinema, and it is an artistic instinct that is unimaginable to the modern film industry who doesn't think of anything other than the money and business spirit. He hailed it a "true and precious work that strives for the highest level of art," and also expressed his high expectancies for the potential emerging new kind of artistic film A Page of Madness would influence.

Many critics, however, criticized the difficulty of understanding the film due to the lack of subtitles. At a joint review session for Eiga Jidai, one of the seven critics who saw a preview of the movie without any commentary by a benshi, articulated: "I couldn't understand it at first glance. I feel that the photographs are not very kind to the audience, because some parts are so cut back that it is difficult for the viewer to absorb them, and some parts are quite slow. I wish they had made that more consistent." Midorika Furukawa felt that it was unacceptable that the film was unsubtitled, conveying: "You can see things and go back, but without subtitles, it becomes even more difficult to understand." Yoshio Ishinomaki declared that A Page of Madness's shortcomings are that it is too fresh and falls into a formality. Additionally, some criticized the lack of uniformity in the narrative, including Yasuji Yoshida of Chūkyō Kinema, who pointed out that its naturalistic and experimental elements were mixed.

Sanjugo Naoki attacked the elitist standpoint of critics who praise the film excessively: "If a few people can be satisfied with what they consider to be 'artistic,' 'literature' is much better than 'movies'." Naoki also found it contradictory that, although the film is film difficult to understand due to its lack of subtitles, the audience fully understands it because of the narration given by the benshi. Furthermore, Akira Iwasaki suggested that the problem of making movies impure is that "If you let each movie stand alone, it's filled with surprising and new cinematic beauty, but when you look at it as a whole, there are so many foreign elements mixed in that it's confusing."

Retrospective

A Page of Madness has continuously gained universal acclaim since its rediscovery.

Time Out, praised the film, writing, "A Page of Madness remains one of the most radical and challenging Japanese movies ever seen here." Panos Kotzathanasis from Asian Movie Pulse.com called it "a masterpiece", praising the film's acting, music, and imagery. Jonathan Crow from Allmovie praised its "eerie, painted sets", lighting, and editing, calling it "a striking exploration of the nature of madness". Nottingham Culture's BBC preview of the film called it, "a balletic musing on our subconscious nightmares, examining dream states in a way that is both beautiful and highly disturbing." Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader praised the film's expressionist style, imagery, and depictions of madness as being "both startling and mesmerizing". The New York Times noted in their review: "The oblique storytelling — there are no intertitles — and innovative editing may make viewers themselves question their sanity" The San Francisco Bay Guardian said the film is "undeniably innovative".

Legacy

In the years following its rediscovery, A Page of Madness is considered by many film historians as a monumental work in world film history, pioneering and starting the avant-garde film movement in Japan, and one of the primary examples of Japanese literary figures becoming directly involved in film production. Literary figures in the past have been involved in cinema, such as Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, who joined the Taishō Katsuei in 1920 and wrote scripts for films such as Amateur Club (1920), and Sanjugo Naoki, who joined the United Motion Picture Artists Association. As Japanese film critic Tadao Sato wrote, the film represents "a work that carved out an extremely important page in the history of Japanese film". Screen Rant also cited A Page of Madness as the first Japanese horror film.

According to Japan Society, the film is widely considered one of the greatest films of the silent era. It has been included by several publications in their top films of Japan, in addition to some top horror film lists. In 1989, Bungeishunjū ranked the film No. 113 in their Best 150 Japanese Movies list based on 370 votes. It was later included at No. 50 in Slant Magazine's "100 Best Horror Movies of All Time", citing the film's visuals and atmosphere as "lingering long after the film ends". Entertainment Weekly ranked the film No. 13 on their list of "The 16 best Japanese horror movies". Vlada Petrić said it "matches the best avant-garde films of the era".

In recent years, it has gained a cult following, and was called a "cult classic" and "cult favorite" by the National Museum of Asian Art and IndieWire respectively.

Sources

Books

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Periodicals

• https://appsv.main.teikyo-u.ac.jp/tosho/kminaguchi24.pdf

• Cohen, Robert (Summer 1976). "A Page of Madness". Film Quarterly. 29 (4): 47–51. JSTOR 1211618.
• Gardner, William (Spring 2004). "New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke's Films and Japanese Modernism". Cinema Journal. 43 (3): 59–78. JSTOR 3661109.
• Gerow, Aaron (Spring 1998). "映画の他の可能性 『狂った一頁』の受容と映像のコード化" [Other Possibilities of Film: The Reception of One Crazy Page and the Coding of Images]. Gengo bunka (in Japanese) (15). Meiji Gakuin University Institute for Language and Culture: 66–80. ISSN 0288-1195.
• Ishida, Hitoshi (March 2020). "無声映画「狂つた一頁」上映会" [Screening of the silent film "A Page of Madness"]. Research on Riichi Yokomitsu (18). Riichi Yokomitsu Literary Society.
• Itagaki, Fumiaki (March 1, 2011). "日本映画におけるトーキー初期の画面比率" [Screen Ratio of Early Talkies in Japanese Films]. Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art Research Bulletin (in Japanese). 15. Japan: The National Museum of Modern Art: 47–59. ISSN 0914-7489.
• Kimura, Yoko (March 1, 2016). "表現者から見たリテラリー・アダプテーションとその再帰的影響: 劇作家・松井周" [“Literary Adaptation and its Recursive Influence from the Artist’s Perspective: Playwright Shu Matsui’s “Theatre” and “Novel"]. Hakuoh University Reviews (in Japanese). 30 (2). Japan: Hakuoh University: 83–105. ISSN 0913-7661.
• Mizuguchi, Kiseko (January 31, 2004). "母もの映画考察（映画ドラマと母性VI" [Movie Study of Motherhood (Movie Drama and Motherhood VI)] (PDF). Teikyo University Junior College Bulletin (in Japanese). 24. Japan: Teikyo University Junior College: 109–134. ISSN 1344-4212.
• Okubo, Mika (February 1, 2008). "新感覚派における＜映画＞の意義 川端康成と映画『狂った一頁』との関わりを軸に" [A Significance of the Film in the new sensationalist School -From the viewpoint of relationship of Yasunari Kawabata to “A Page of Madness”]. Information Communication Research Collection Journal (in Japanese). 11 (2). Japan: Meiji University: 19–29. ISSN 1884-8001.
• Peterson, James (Autumn 1989). "A War of Utter Rebellion: Kinugasa's "Page of Madness" and the Japanese Avant-Garde of the 1920s". Cinema Journal. 29 (1): 36–53. JSTOR 1225300.
• Petrić, Vlada (Fall 1983). "A Page of Madness: A Neglected Masterpiece of the Silent Cinema". Film Criticism. 8 (1): 86–106. JSTOR 44018745.
• Takano, Etsuko [in Japanese], ed. (October 1975). "2 major works directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa: A Page of Madness/Crossroads" (in Japanese). Iwanami Hall. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)- Find source
• Toeda, Yuichi (Spring 1999). "新感覚派映画聯盟」と横光利一 1920年代日本における芸術交流の一側面" [The New Sensation Film Federation and Riichi Yokomitsu: An Aspect of Artistic Exchange in Japan in the 1920s]. Japanese Literature Research (in Japanese). 127 (1): 33–44. ISSN 0389-8636.

Further reading

• Hatori, Tetsuya (June 1, 1998). 川端康成全作品研究事典 [Kawabata Yasunari Comprehensive Research Encyclopedia] (in Japanese). Japan: Bensei Shuppan. ISBN 978-4-5850-6008-6 – via Google Books.

External links

• A Page of Madness at AllMovie
• A Page of Madness at IMDb
• A Page of Madness at Rotten Tomatoes
• A Page of Madness at the TCM Movie Database
• A Page of Madness at SilentEra