KWAIDAN Movie Review

This visually masterful rendering of four ghostly stories by Lafcadio Hearn remains one of the most beautiful and gently disquieting visions of the supernatural ever committed to film. Japan's Masaki Kobayashi mounted these four stories in a majestic, widescreen, richly colored style, each with a distinctive look. “Black Hair” is the story of a man who returns to his wife after leaving her for a younger woman, only to make a terrifying discovery. “Woman of the Snow” tells of an exhausted, nearly frozen woodcutter whose life is spared by a ghostly spirit, after which he tries to live by the spirit's one condition: to never reveal to anyone what he has seen this night. The intriguingly titled “Hoichi the Earless” is the tale of a blind musician who entertains an audience of ghosts each evening; when a priest tells Hoichi that the ghosts will tear him apart if he keeps singing, Hoichi allows his entire body to be covered with holy verses to protect himself. There are two parts of his body, however, that the priest neglects to protect. The final episode, “In a Cup of Tea,” is the story of a warrior who first sees his enemy reflected in a teacup. Unfortunately, the image proves startlingly elusive when the time for combat arrives. Kwaidan achieves its exhilaratingly other-worldly feel through highly stylized settings, such as the magnificent design for the “Woman of the Snow” sequence, which features huge painted eyes hovering in the sky at strategic moments. The film was shot entirely in a studio with lighting and color tightly controlled, and the effect is of a living, moving Japanese scroll that illustrates the fantastic with boldly imaginative designs. The film's deliberate pacing was too much for its original American distributor, though, and that “Woman of the Snow” sequence was excised from Kwaidan's original American release. It's been restored in the letterboxed video and laserdisc versions of this lush, haunting, elegantly scary film. Portions of Toru Takemitsu's chilling score can be heard on a recent CD compilation of his film music. Special Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Ugetsu, Onibaba, Dead of Night

1964 164m/C JP Michiyo Aratama, Rentaro Mikuni, Katsuo Nakamura, Keiko Kishi, Tatsuya Nakadai, Takashi Shimura. D: Masaki Kobayashi; W: Yoko Mizuki; C: Yoshio Miyajima; M: Toru Takemitsu. Cannes Film Festival '65: Grand Jury Prize; Nominations: Academy Awards '65: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS, LV, Letterbox VYY, NOS, SNC