CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE + SENSORY OVERLOAD @ Sonotheque
Monday August 3 - Sonotheque - 1444 W. Chicago - 312.226.7600
CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE + SENSORY OVERLOAD 6-9PM CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE PRESENTS: KURUTTA IPPEIJI/A PAGE OF MADNESS/A PAGE OUT OF ORDER (1926) 60 MINUTES – DIRECTED BY TEINOSUKE KINUGASA MONSIEUR FANTOMAS (1936) 17 MINUTES – DIRECTED BY ERNST MOERNAN CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE: FROM ARTHOUSE TO GRINDHOUSE EVERY FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH FILMS SELECTED BY JOE BRYL 6PM to 9PM NO COVER 21+ “A stunning invocation of the world as viewed by the mentally ill, within minutes, as the rapid montage of the opening storm sequences dissolves into the surrealistic fantasy of the sailor's wife dressed in an exotic costume dancing in front of art-deco inspired backdrop featuring a large spinning ball flanked by ornate fountains, A Page of Madness bowls you over with a barrage of startling images utilizing every technique in the book known to filmmakers of the time. Just ask anyone who's seen it. Even now, Kinugasa's film seems as fresh as a daisy and when seen on the big screen, as eye-popping an experience as anything you're likely to see released nowadays.” - Jasper Sharp - Midnight Eye After having disappeared without a trace for forty five years, Kurutta Ippeiji, hereafter referred to as A Page of Madness (though some sources refer it by the titles A Crazy Page or A Page Out of Order) was unearthed in Teinosuke Kinugasa’s garden shed in 1971. This momentous rediscovery was important for many reasons: First, because it parallels the artistic avant-garde film movements in European cinema although its immediate influence at the time was slightly felt. Second, because after having been believed lost after a fire in the Shimogamo studios in 1950 along with all the films stored there A Page of Madness could now be reborn and reappraised. Kinugasa struck up a new shortened print (the original print was filmed at 18 frames per second and was 103 minutes in length), composed a new musical score and released it around the world to be viewed once more. This restoration is all the more remarkable since the survival rate for silent Japanese cinema is the worst of any major film-producing nation with the exception of India. Approximately, 7000 films were made in Japan in the twenties. Of those only 1% are still in existence and the immense loss is due to various causes ranging from apparent neglect, the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama and the United States fire-bombings during WWII. Based on a treatment by novelist Yasunari Kawabata, who would later win the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, A Page of Madness was deeply influenced by the modernist shinkankaku (new impressionist) school. Shinkankaku appropriated the European avant-garde movements of futurism, cubism, expressionism, dadaism, symbolism and constructivism while at the same time targeting the naturalist style of writing defined in Japan as shishosetsu. What is readily apparent from one’s initial viewing of the film is that A Page of Madness subverts most normal narrative discourse with its use of radical experimental techniques of non-linear montage, surrealistic fantasy and its use of superimpositions and distorted images in its portrayal of madness and paralysis. As writer Vlada Petric states in an essay entitled A Page of Madness: A Neglected Masterpiece of Silent Cinema published in the Fall 1983 edition of Film Criticism, “The fact remains that historically Kinugasa made the first full feature film whose plot development is radically subverted, whilst its cinematic structure includes every film device known at the time. These devices, moreover, are used not for their own sake but to convey complex psychological content without the aid of titles” (the strongest direct influence at the time was certainly F. W. Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924) with its rejection of intertitles and its expressionistic camera technique). This ideal of a titleless film with its use of close-ups and quick cross-cutting maintained a strong presence in the Pure Film Movement (1915-1925) in Japanese cinema which also aimed to emulate the quality and prestige of Western cinema in films like Abel Gance’s La Roue (1922), Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Argent (1928) and Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925). In particular, the Pure Film Movement attacked the use of female impersonators (onnagatta or oyama) that was prevalent in Japanese film (more strange being that Kinuguasa started his career as an actor in female roles). The Pure Film Movement’s equal vitriolic attack on the use of a benshi, or narrator to engage the audience by explaining what was transpiring on screen was not adhered to in the screenings of A Page of Madness. Rather, Kinugasa used the services of Tokugawa Musei, the most famous benshi at the time for the premier at the Musashinokan film theatre in Tokyo. An article penned for Chukyo Kinema 2.8 (1926) stated quite succinctly; “Here film is not simply moved by a story. It is cinema for the sake of cinema. It has musical rhythm, not just a novelistic narrative, one that need only evoke a mood. This is an object of devotion conceived out of the theories of pure and absolute film, a true and precious thing pushing toward artistic instinct and artistic supremacy, something unthinkable to the film producers of today, who are consumed by nothing but money and the business mentality.” Included for this month’s screening will be Monsieur Fantomas (1936) directed by Belgian poet, lawyer and jazz lover Ernst Moerman. Fantomas, a fictional character created by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain in 1911 was a master criminal and man of a thousand faces who spread chaos and struck terror in pre-WWI French society. A precursor to Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, Fantomas was filmed with great success as a serial by Louis Feuillade beginning in 1913 for Gaumont and was a major influence to the European avant-garde and especially the surrealist movement (Max Jacob with Guillaume Apollinaire founded the Societé des Amis de Fantômas while Rene Magritte and Juan Gris incorporated Fantomas iconography within their paintings). Shot on a shoe-string budget and dedicated to Jean Cocteau, Monsieur Fantomas is part parody, love story, satire and an indictment against religion. In February 1933 Moerman published his Fantomas collection of writings composed of poems and text in five chapters which he used a basis for his only movie which he subtitled ‘a surrealistic film’. It’s sense of blasphemy is reinforced with its imagery of priests in women’s underwear applying make-up while a nun in a swimming costume drags the masked hero (or rather anti-hero) off along a beach past a No Entry sign. Moerman categorized the film as ‘a world where nothing is impossible, where the miracle is the shortest route from uncertainty to mystery’. Doors open at 6pm with the short starting at 6:30pm followed by the main film. All prints are DVD projection. There is no cover for the screening but entrance is 21+ (not due to any salacious nature of the films but only because of the venue's licensing). All films in the series are selected by Joe Bryl, musical director and co-owner of Sonotheque.
