Kwaidan
Had it not been our film club pick, I probably wouldn’t have watched Kwaidan. But, boy, am I glad I did — what a beautiful movie.
The 1965 Japanese film, which takes its title from Lafcadio Hearn’s 1904 book, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, falls more into the genre of ghost stories than horror.
The movie credits open in a near-silence, periodically and startlingly broken by percussive instruments. (Warning: Don’t turn up the volume thinking it’s just a very quiet soundtrack.)
Wikipedia mentions that the film’s director, Masaki Kobayashi, went over budget and had to sell his house to complete the film. Well, you can certainly see where the money went. The sets, which appear to be entirely build on a soundstage, are lavish with intricate detail that shows up well in the pristine print streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Take the setting for the first of four stories, “The Black Hair.” As the segment opens, the home of a swordsman and his wife has seen better days, as has their marriage. He leaves his wife to find fame and fortune. As the story unfolds, the house crumbles under his feet just as his life crumbles before his eyes. The textures of both sights and sounds in the final scene are as sumptuous as they are chilling.