GamerTab That was an excellent one.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Michael_Elliott Kurutta ippêji (1926) *** (out of 4) Bizarre Japanese horror film has a man taking a janitor job at an asylum so that he can be closer to his wife who was committed after trying to kill their child. Had Luis Bunuel been bore in Japan and started making movies in 1926 then I'm guessing the final product would have came out looking like this thing. Lost for decades, it's easy to see why this film was never discovered but now that it's making its way around, it seems like this is destined to become something of a cult favorite to silent and horror fans. There's no straight story being told here, instead it's more avant-garde as we get all sorts of surreal images. We get the basic story but everything else is either told in flashback or through extra fast editing that helps build up the insanity of the lead character. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa really wants to get inside the mind of the insane and I think he does a pretty good job with it. At just 59-minutes the film moves at a pretty fast rate and a lot of this can be credited to the editing. I thought that the editing was the real star of the movie as it's done in such a fashion that you often see something but then you question what it was that you actually saw. You also have to try and keep up with what's going on and everything is happening so fast that you can see that the director was trying to use this to make the viewer feel what the characters were feeling being the asylum walls. There aren't any intertitles, which just adds to the visual image and the music score (done in the 70s) fits the film very well.

John Seal ...until, of course, you've seen it, at which point it instantly vaults to the first rank of silents along with Greed, The Crowd, Man With a Movie Camera, Nosferatu, and so forth. I don't want to give away too much--a great deal of pleasure will be derived from a 'cold' viewing of A Page of Madness--but let's just say it's one of the most radical films of the 1920s. So far ahead of its time that it remains revelatory and utterly contemporary eighty years on, it anticipates much of twentieth century avant garde and experimental cinema whilst also managing to tell a story that is completely captivating. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa is best known for his 1953 drama Gate of Hell, but his lengthy hundred-film plus resume extends back to the early '30s and surely harbors some other gems. Presumably and sadly, most of them are probably lost--if I'm wrong, someone please point me towards more!

crossbow0106 If you do not think you can take graphic scenes of mentally unstable people, this film is not for you.This story is about a man who takes a job at a local mental institution so he can be near his wife, who has gone mad. Throughout this long thought lost film you see clearly harrowing images of people at the institution. The soundtrack only adds to the foreboding. There are people lying catatonic and there is a dancer who doesn't stop dancing until she drops to the floor, exhausted. The film is 59 minutes long, I think it was originally longer but this was all that was found. There are no inter titles, its a silent film. In Japan, I am certain the benshi narrated the story in theaters, but your imagination has to follow this story. So, why a 7? It is daring, unflinching, brave and both ugly and not at the same time. As a point of reference only, Guy Maddin's work approaches this. Just know going in there is no happiness here. You won't soon forget this film. Best idea: Don't watch it before bedtime, it will stay with you.

Huron Hard to find, I saw this in the 1960's in Berkeley, California and even then it seemed dated and yet the Japanese style and film touches that later influenced Kurosawa & Ozu were unmistakable. This is surely the first important Japanese film and the one that influenced the later masters. Simple in story-telling and rich in characterization, even if the acting seems a bit overwrought. Try to find it.