An overly confident samurai, an exhausting kidnapee, and a demon serpent are a few of the characters in these rare gems from the Japanese silent era.
The Dull Sword (Namakura gatana) (1917)
Dir. Junichi Kōchi
5min; DCP, silent, tinted
Japan
In this oldest known surviving example of moving image anime, an overly-confident samurai looks for unsuspecting victims on which to try out his new sword, but neither his targets nor his weapon prove willing to play along.
DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan.
An Unforgettable Grudge (Bakumatsu kenshi: Chōkon) (1926)
Dir. Daisuke Itō
15min, DCP, silent, tinted
Japan
Only the final reel of this samurai melodrama from director Daisuke Itō survives today—enough to suggest the enormity of the loss. A story of samurai brothers who fall in love with the same woman, An Unforgettable Grudge culminates with a ferocious sword fight between one spurned brother and an army of warriors.
DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan.
Blood Spattered Takadanobaba (Chikemure Takadanobaba) (1928)
Dir. Daisuke Itō
12 min, DCP, black and white, silent
Intertitles in Japanese with English subtitles
Japan
Star Denjirō Ōkōchi and director Daisuke Itō helped remake the chambara genre in the late 1920s, infusing it with visual flash and mythic power. Sadly, the films exist mostly in fragmentary form— such is the case with Blood Spattered Takadanobaba. This brief scene finds the rōnin Yasube racing to help his uncle fight off a band of villainous samurai. So that audiences can experience more directly how a benshi’s specific style can influence a film, Blood Spattered Takadanobaba will be repeated over the course of this series with a different narrator each time.
Print courtesy of the Toy Film Museum.
Orochi (1925)
Dir. Buntarō Futagawa
101 min, DCP, black and white, silent with Japanese intertitles
Japan
Tsumasaburō Bandō, one of Japan’s earliest screen idols, plays a masterless samurai who is forced to become a gangster’s bodyguard in this dazzling jidaigeki (period drama). Japanese film critic Junichiro Tanaka praised it in the pages of Kinema Junpo in 1952, particularly for its “cinematic beauty of light, shadow, and movement.”
UPCOMING Screenings
RUNNING TIME
133min
VENUE
TICKET INFORMATION
General Admission: $20
Members: $15
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Leadership support for
BAM Access Programs provided by the
Jerome L. Greene Foundation
Leadership support for
BAM Film provided by
the Ford Foundation and
The Thompson Family Foundation
