A disappointment in the era of the great Japanese costume films. This black and white companion piece to GATE OF HELL is the work of two of it's stars and it's veteran director. The scale is impressive but the script is not.
I'll watch Machika Kyo do anything so the piece is not a total write off but it undermines Kinugasa's status, spinning of films that go back to the twenties and making him a more substantial film maker than his later contemporaries who are better known in the west.
If this has got to run another two lines let me add that this was a let down in the two hundred film Japanese retrospective that opened the unaccountably closed Chaillot Cinematheque in Paris.
I'll watch Machika Kyo do anything so the piece is not a total write off but it undermines Kinugasa's status, spinning of films that go back to the twenties and making him a more substantial film maker than his later contemporaries who are better known in the west.
If this has got to run another two lines let me add that this was a let down in the two hundred film Japanese retrospective that opened the unaccountably closed Chaillot Cinematheque in Paris.
