GATE OF HELL Movie Review

Jigokumen

One of the seminal moments of my moviegoing life occurred in 1965, when a local art house ran a new-to-me triple bill of Japanese films: Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes, Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu, and Teinosuke Kinugasa's 1954 Gate of Hell. Calling the evening sensory overload would be an understatement. Set in the 12th century, Gate of Hell is the story of a victorious warrior whose grateful lord rewards his loyalty by offering to give him anything he wants. When the warrior asks for the hand of a beautiful noblewoman (Rashomon's Machiko Kyo) who happens to already be married, a riveting contest of wills ensues, resulting in tragedy. It's a majestic and powerful drama on every level, but it derives a huge amount of its impact from the truly astounding color cinematography. More than 30 years later, Woman in the Dunes and Ugetsu remain widely acknowledged classics, seen and written about on a regular basis, yet Gate of Hell—which I still recall as the real jaw-dropper of that evening—is rarely screened. The reason for its scarcity has nothing to do with the quality of the film, and everything to do with the quality of film stock. Gate of Hell was photographed with Eastmancolor film, and its color palette—so immediate and vivid that it felt like 3-D—retained its majesty in prints that were circulated for many years. Inevitably, however, those prints faded into a pale, ghostly magenta, leaving not even a hint of the film's original beauty. Finding a decent print today is impossible. Current video versions have partially resuscitated the color, but a full-scale restoration is needed to rescue this amazing experience for a new generation. Gate of Hell won the Academy Award for Color Costume Design, as well as a Special Award for Best Foreign Film (two years before that Oscar was given annually.)

NEXT STOP… A Page of Madness, Ugetsu, Chikamatsu Monogatari

1954 89m/C JP Kazuo Hasegawa, Machiko Kyo, Isao Yamagata, Koreya Senda; D: Teinosuke Kinugasa; W: Teinosuke Kinugasa; C: Kohei Sugiyama; M: Yashushi Akutagawa. Academy Awards ‘54: Best Costume Design (Color), Best Foreign Film; Cannes Film Festival ‘54: Best Film. VHS, 8mm VYY, DVT, VDM