(Kurutta Ippeiji, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan 1926, 59 min., 35mm)
A brilliant avant-garde exploration of the helplessness felt by a mentally ill person’s loved ones, this film tells of a man who works as a janitor in the insane asylum where his wife is a patient. Using a battery of expressionistic visual devices, Kinugasa shifts between lyric “sanity” and visual shock, building the story around the janitor’s attempt to help his wife to escape — except she wants to remain in her ‘home.’ An undisputed masterpiece of Japanese cinema, this film was considered lost for many years until a single nitrate copy was discovered by the director in 1970, from which this print derives.
35mm print from the George Eastman Museum collection.
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