Kwaidan - Masters of Cinema series [DVD] [1964]

Masaki Kobayashi's extraordinary masterpiece Kwaidan, consists of four haunting ghost tales, well known in Japanese mythology, adapted from Lafcadio Hearn's classic interpretations from his book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

The first tale "Black Hair", sends a moral message about appreciating what you have and not to seek fortune for reasons such as vanity and greed. The opening sequence is hypnotic, as the camera pans slowly over the gate of an old and dilapidated house. It goes through the garden into the house, with the sound of wood slapping together. This is a brilliant start to an eerie story and sets the mood perfectly. It cleverly uses dark colours, which does not prepare you for the astoundingly vivid colours of the next tale.

"The Woman of the Snow" features the popular folkloric creature Yuki-Onna, who controls the snow. This segment starts of with a stormy, snow covered forest with a green and blue background. On the background is swirling eyes beautifully painted, like glass marbles. As the storm calms down, a small red flag is fluttering in the vast amounts of pearly white snow. When the cold weather has ended, there are warm, rich reds, yellows and oranges all blending in together. Throughout the story, there are eyes across the sky, either shut or open, which creates a beautiful mixture of Expressionism and Japanese imagery.

The most interesting and brilliant story is "Hoachi the Earless". It opens with a breathtaking scene depicting the true story of The Battle of Dan-no-ura, with a haunting voice performing the most famous part of the epic war poem "The Tale of the Heike", which is accompanied by an instrument called the Biwa. All of the stories in Kwaidan have exquisite imagery and a poetic elegance to them. However, this one is exceptionally fascinating, because it is a myth, based on a myth which links back to something that actually happened.

"In a Cup of Tea" is very different from the others, not as long and set in a different time zone. It starts off in 1899 which is quite near when it was written by Hearn. The narrater of the story is an author who is writing the myth. We then go back 250 years, into the story ,1649 . A sumari looks into a cup of tea and sees the smirking head of a man staring back at him. Convinced he is imaging it, he drinks the tea, and is eventually driven to madness. We then go back to 1899 where the film ends with a shocking and nightmarish conclusion.

The film does not use violence and gore to create fear, rather it uses suspense and psychological disturbance to chill the audience, along with its Expressionistic style which creates a wonderfully dreamlike mood. With it's stunning cinematography and it's incredibly beautiful, hand painted backdrops of outstanding colours, Kwaidan is a sophisticated work of art and a must have for any one interested in Japanese legends and Art house films.

Special Features: 72 page illustrated book about the film, Hearn, the stories and how it was made. Original Trailers.
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Certificate: 15
Colour
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running time: 183 mins
Region: 2

This is quite simply one of the most exquisite films ever made, a marvel of aesthetic refinement in every way, and a unique work of art. There are not enough superlatives to describe the manifold wonders of Kwaidan: the fine acting, gorgeous sets, subtle direction, and especially the extraordinary musique concrete score by Takemitsu, all combined by the obsessive artistry of Kobayashi to realize a rare and beautiful cinematic vision. This film is beyond praise.

The film tells the story of four tales drawn from Lafcadio Hearn's turn-of the century book of the same name (Kwaidan means "weird tales" and is a collection of Japanese and Chinese "fairy" tales). The result is a magnificient vision of death and the strange, often cruel but devoid of what could be called Gothic morbidity. One is taken into the fantastic world of the Japanese mediaeval period, or rather how an American of Irish-Greek descent, fleeing late XIXth Century modernism, saw it. The film itself has respected Hearn's delicate and sensual approach to ghosts and ghouls - which probably wasn't difficult since Hearn became more Japanese than the Japanese themselves. It shows that in some ways, ghosts and evil spirits are also human. To illustrate that last statement, I will refer the reader / viewer to the wonderful tale of the blind bhuddist novice told to play his biwa to an extraordinary audience. The build up is wilfully slow, the intention being always to suck in the audience, to amaze it rather than shock it. The sound tract, like the visuals is haunting and when this film came out on the big screen in the late sixties it received huge interest from people who at that time, already, thought that the world (as it was) was not enough...