Kwaidan (1964)

Kwaidan: Directed by Masaki Kobayashi. With Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe, Rentarô Mikuni, Kenjirô Ishiyama. A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural themes.

“Thereu0026#39;s a good bit of discussion of this film as u0026quot;horroru0026quot;; may I suggest that itu0026#39;s horrific in the sense of the ancient Greek tragedies. Thereu0026#39;s no attempt to coerce your Hollywood-abused adrenals into delivering just one more squirt by means of some in-your-face special effect. In fact, for each of these slowly developed stories, once youu0026#39;ve understood the premise, the story will unfold pretty much as youu0026#39;ve guessed it must, inexorably, relentlessly. The ghosts arenu0026#39;t there to u0026quot;spooku0026quot; us, theyu0026#39;re to show us our common human spiritual and emotional failings. The horror of a ghost wife, for instance, isnu0026#39;t that her chains drag noisily across the the hardwood parquet floor, but that weu0026#39;ve created her by our insensitivity, our misplaced values, or our betrayals.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe visual style is stupendous! The action takes place in a disappeared, iconic world of classical medieval Japan, perfect, and admitting no trace of the reality of modern times. Overlaid is a European Expressionist color sensibility, with emotionally charged color displacements of sky and skin, as if Hokusai and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had been working cooperatively on the sets and lighting.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis is a wonderful movie. Please ignore attempts to fit it into some box, some genre. Rather look at it as a mature work of art, which happens to choose old Japanese ghost stories as its starting point.”