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A Page of Madness
A haunting, silent, modernist classic, visibly influenced by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Overview
This haunting, modernist classic was visibly influenced by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and other groundbreaking European films of its day. With audacious experimentation and dazzling visual flair, A Page of Madness tells the story of a man who takes a job at a mental asylum to be near to his interned wife. Believed lost for nearly 50 years, and only rediscovered in the 1970s, Kinugasa’s film remains defiantly, fascinatingly unique.
As was traditional at the time of its release, original screenings of A Page of Madness would have been accompanied by a benshi, a live narrator standing by the side of the screen, who fleshed out the story with explainers and poetic asides. As such this version of the film has no intertitles or subtitles to help follow the narrative, but this further elevates the film's surrealist, enigmatic tone.
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