Close to Madness: On A Page of Madness
Note: This is the hundred-and-thirty-seventh in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my second favorite 1926 film, A PAGE OF MADNESS, directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa.
Close ups, whip pans, stark lighting: with A PAGE OF MADNESS, Japanese filmmaker Teinosuke Kinugasa probably made the most compelling film about insanity up to the point that it was released in 1926, and maybe for a considerable amount of time after that. His boundary-breaking film, which especially broke the stagebound-aries (sorry) of then-contemporary Japanese cinema, imparts a vague yet overpowering sense of anxiety and drama. Vague because a lack of intertitles and traditional benshi narration leave the actual plot generally hard to follow. Overpowering because there’s no way to interpret the events of the film as anything but unsettling, and the way Kinugasa bends the film language of his peers to create a visual experience unlike most any other film of the time.
Of course, some of the work of the European avant-garde could be compared to A PAGE OF MADNESS, and in fact it has. But it’s not incredibly clear how much exposure Kinugasa had to the avant-garde movement, in film especially. The literary aspect of the avant-garde had already trickled into Japan, however, and Kinugasa was more surely exposed to German Expressionism, which A PAGE OF MADNESS may have been influenced by. But Kinugasa filtered these possible influences through Japanese stage and already existing film tradition. So maybe I’m immediately contradicting myself. He bent the canonical Japanese aesthetic into a new film language.
As radical as A PAGE OF MADNESS feels in hindsight, certain critics and historians have pointed out that the original film was possibly not seen as obtuse as our modern lens would have us believe, because of that aforementioned benshi narration. Even more have pointed out the aforementioned Expressionist and avant-garde movements render A PAGE OF MADNESS not truly original. Regardless, contemporary Japanese critics praised and took issue with the film in equal measure. It was not in keeping with the still-brief yet established Japanese cinematic structure, kabuki-influenced as it was. But along with films like OROCHI (1925), A PAGE OF MADNESS heralded a new national identity for Japanese film, a sort of stylized authenticity that did in fact carry the grace of the Japanese stage while featuring cinematography that achieved intimacy no theatrical production could achieve.
One of the greatest strengths of A PAGE OF MADNESS is the subjectivity its cinematography imparts. The film essentially follows a man who takes a job as a janitor at an insane asylum in order to be close to his wife; his wife is institutionalized for attempting to drown their child. There, he comes into contact with the other inmates and authoritarian doctors. But a definite proceeding of events is not necessarily easily summarized, nor is such a summary necessarily worth creating or reading. The janitor is played by famed stage actor Masao Inoue (who forsook his stage obligations to take this role for free) with a quiet intensity that, at times, explodes into anger or passion. It’s a remarkable performance, one that descends into its own form of insanity.
A final element that effectively contributes to the metafictional feeling of madness of the film: the brief juxtapositions of the outside world. Much of A PAGE OF MADNESS takes place in a relatively limited set, albeit one steeped in chiaroscuro. But it does feel cramped, as an insane asylum lined with cells would. Brief sequences bring the action outside, most notably in a little garden that the inmates are allowed to visit from time to time. There, the subjectivity of the interiors feels like it dissolves away. The cinematography feels more certain. Same goes for when the janitor attempts to rescue his wife and they get as far as the outside of the front door. It’s a dark and stormy night, but the framing of the shot feels more solid. These are powerful moments that feel different from the rest of the film.
What I took away from A PAGE OF MADNESS is that it feels incredibly nuanced, especially for its time and the industry from which it came. Aesthetically, it’s bolder than anything that came before it in Japanese film. Narrative-ly and psychologically, it’s braver and more subjective than anything that came before it, well, anywhere. A PAGE OF MADNESS makes no certain claims on the subject of insanity. It just makes you feel it for the extent of its run time.
