KWAIDAN (1964)

We popped this award-winning Japanese anthology film in the DVD player as a Friday night Chiller Theatre pick. Not a good choice. Despite its reputation, this is not a horror film in any meaningful way. We gave up after the slow first half-hour. But the next night, with genre expectations gone, we enjoyed it for what it is: a beautifully shot, deliberately paced rendition of four ghost stories (more or less) with a tone of unease rather than horror. The film dramatizes four supernatural stories of Japanese folklore, originally collected and retold by Lafcadio Hearn. In "The Black Hair," a samurai reduced to poverty leaves his wife to make a more financially beneficial marriage with a woman from a high-class family. But after several years, he soon realizes that his new wife is selfish and a life lived just for material satisfaction is not fulfilling, so he leaves to go back to his first wife. She welcomes him home, though oddly, she seems not to have aged, and their home is just as it was. As he learns, appearances can be deceiving. The second story, "Woman of the Snow," has a beautiful, if patently artificial, setting, with a winter skyscape of clouds that look like eyes. During a snowstorm, a woodsman and his apprentice take shelter in what seems to be an abandoned hut. The next morning, a woman with long black hair appears and breathes frost onto the older man's face, killing him. She spares the younger man but tells him he must never tell anyone about the incident. Of course, in folklore, we all know what eventually happens when someone is told not to do something: they do it. Consequences follow. 

The third story is the longest and has the slowest pace, and its title,"Hoichi the Earless," is a bit of a spoiler, but it's worth sitting through. We first see two clans in a sea battle, and the losing clan dies out when all the women kill themselves in disgrace. The shoreline is said to be haunted by ghosts of the clan. A blind servant named Hoichi is known for singing a ballad of the battle, and one night, a samurai arrives and takes Hoichi to the shoreline where what appears to be a mighty court of people listen to him play his song. He does this night after night until two of his friends realize he is playing to the ghosts of the losing clan, and they fear that he will be taken by the dead as one of them. The set and effects make this a very effective sequence. The last story, "In a Cup of Tea," is the least. Its tale of a writer whose creativity is stymied when he sees a vision of a face in his tea is both predictable and muddled. Overall, the film, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is too long—the version I saw on a Criterion DVD is 161 minutes, and a 3 hour cut is available elsewhere—but its slow pace is part of what makes it evocative. Kobayashi's use of vivid color and studio sets bring to mind the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburgerer, like Black Narcissus or Tales of Hoffmann. Well worth watching for its look and atmosphere. [DVD]