Kwaidan - Criterion Collection
by Masaki Kobayashi
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Keiko Kishi, Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe, Rentaro Mikuni, Tatsuya NakadaiDirector: Masaki Kobayashi
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Japanese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 161 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-10-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Kwaidan - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Would Be Five Stars Except For The Last Story
Summary: 4 Stars
I watched this film on TCM weeks ago and its is still with me. There are four stories of the supernatural featured in the film, and the final tale doesn't come across as complete as the first three (apparently the fourth tale was left out of the film for the American theatrical release in the Sixties). The story pictured on the cover is absolutely brilliant. The sets, the mood, the sound design... This and IKIRU are perhaps my favorite all time Japanese titles.
Summary of Kwaidan - Criterion Collection
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan features four nightmarish tales in which terror thrives and demons lurk. Adapted from traditional Japanese ghost stories, this lavish, widescreen production drew extensively on Kobayashi's own training as a student of painting and fine arts. Criterion is proud to present Kwaidan in a new ravishing color transfer.A masterpiece of filmmaking artifice and mood-setting atmosphere, Kwaidan consists of four ghost stories adapted from the fiction of Greek-born Lafcadio Hearn (a.k.a. Yakumo Koizumi, 1850-1904), who assimilated into Japanese culture so thoroughly that his writings reveal no evidence of Western influence. So it is that these four cinematic interpretations--perhaps more accurately described as tales of spectral visitation--are sublimely Japanese in tone and texture, created entirely in a studio with frequently stunning results. There are painterly images here that remain the most beautiful and haunting in all of Japanese cinema, presented with the purity of silent film, sparsely accompanied by post-synchronized sounds and music (by Toru Takemitsu) that enhance the otherworldly effect of director Masaki Kobayashi's meticulous imagery. When viewed in a receptive frame of mind, Kwaidan can be intensely hypnotic.
Each of the four stories find their protagonists confronted by spirits that compel them to (respectively) make amends for past mistakes, maintain vows of silence, satisfy the yearnings of the undead, or capture phantoms that remain frightfully elusive. As each tale progresses, their supernatural elements grow increasingly intense and distant from the confines of reality. With careful use of glorious color and wide-screen composition, Kwaidan exists in a netherworld that is both real and imagined, its characters never quite sure they can trust what they've seen and heard. Vastly different from the more overt shocks of Western horror, the film casts a supernatural spell that remains timelessly effective. --Jeff Shannon
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