Teinosuke Kinugasa’s asylum-set Japanese silent, A Page of Madness, was considered lost for nearly half a century.
Rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971, the film is the product of an avant-garde group of Japanese artists known as the Shinkankakuha (or School of New Perceptions) who tried to overcome naturalistic representation.
Yasunari Kawabata, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, was credited with the original story, and was often cited as the screenwriter. However, the scenario is now considered a collaboration between him, Kinugasa, Banko Sawada, and Minoru Inuzuka.
A jagged portrayal of mental illness, this horror movie is an early avant-garde experiment from Teinosuke Kinugasa (“Gate of Hell”).
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.
With its lapses into daydreams and nightmares, the film stimulates the viewers’ subconscious while defying easy interpretation.
