Manji (1964)

3 Stars (out of 4)

All Mixed Up

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Director Yasuzo Masumura is known by a much smaller fraction of film buffs than his Japanese contemporaries. At first I thought he might have been considered a "B" filmmaker, slapped aside to the fringes of film history. But even if he was, he counts among his fans filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni and Nagisa Oshima.

He studied film and filmmaking in Italy, wrote about Italian master Luchino Visconti and the history of Japanese cinema. Returning to Japan, he assisted the great Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa at Daiei Studios before becoming a director himself. He enjoyed working with the same collaborators again and again, over the course of his 50-odd films. He was interested in characters at the extreme of human behavior, which resonates universally, but especially in Japan.

Presented in that lovely, overwrought style of the great melodramas by Douglas Sirk, Masumura's Manji tells the story of a twisted love quadrangle where the emotions run so high that any of the four would gladly lay down his or her life in the name of love. But is it really love, or just sick obsession? A bored housewife begins taking art classes and falls in love with a mysterious woman she meets there. Before long, they're having secret trysts. The woman's male lover enters the game and makes a blood pact with the housewife. Then the husband gets in on the game. Soon, everyone is threatening to kill everyone including themselves, and the woman makes everyone take sleeping drugs. You have to check subtlety at the door, but once you do, you'll love this overripe drama.

San Francisco's Fantoma Films has released Manji along with three other Masumura films on DVD for the first time: Giants and Toys (1958), Afraid to Die (1960), and Blind Beast (1969). All four are presented in color and "Daieiscope" widescreen, and though the colors might not seem as bold as you'd expect, we have to remember that color from this period is notoriously difficult to restore (various shades fade and shrink faster than other shades). Fantoma has done a remarkable job refurbishing these great films to DVD.