A Page of Madness

• Masao Inoue
• Nakagawa Yoshie

A Page of Madness (Japanese狂っ た 一 頁, Kurutta ippēji, GV " A crazed Site") is a silent film by the Japanese director Kinugasa Teinosuke, from the year 1926. The film was considered lost for almost 50 years until he was rediscovered in 1971 Kinugasas warehouse. The film is the product of an avant-garde group of Japanese artist named Shinkankaku -ha ( new style of perception), which aimed to overcome the naturalistic representation. Kawabata Yasunari, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, even given in the film as a writer of history. He is often named as a screenwriter of the film, and a version of the script is part of the complete edition of his works. Today, the script is not considered to be collaboration between Kawabata, Kinugasa, Banko Sawada, and Minoru Inuzuka.

Action

The film is set in a mental institution. Although he is cut together in an ever- disturbing becoming Swirl image, the film tells the story disjointed the janitor of the asylum where his wife is housed as a patient. One day their daughter shows up to tell the mother of her engagement. This requires a variety of storylines and flashbacks in transition, which merge gradually to the family history, and so for example, explain why the mother was hospitalized and the daughter knows nothing of her father's caretaker activity.

Reception

The film is without intertitles, making it more difficult for today's audience to understand. Of the labels today in 1926 were in the cinema as explanation available is missing almost a third. Furthermore, the film in the twenties in Japan next musical accompaniment by a narrator or Benshi (弁 士) had been accompanied. A famous representative of the Benshi was Tokugawa Musei that accompanied the film in the cinema Musashinokan of Shinjuku in Tokyo.

Swell

• William O. Gardner: New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke 's Films and Japanese Modernism. In: Journal Cinema. 43, No. 3, Spring 2004, pp. 59-78.
• Aaron Gerow: A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2008, ISBN 978-1-929280-51-3.
• Mariann Lewinsky: A Crazy Page: silent film and cinematic avant-garde in Japan. Chronos, 1997, ISBN 3-905312-28- X.