The Vindictive Snake & shorts
- This is a past program
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series The Art of the Benshi. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
During the silent film era in Japan, which extended into the early 1930s, film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi. Full-fledged artists in their own right, benshi familiarized and enlivened the cinema experience in Japan through expressive performances that illuminated and extended the emotional and thematic range of the works on screen. Benshi such as Tokugawa Musei, Ikukoma Raiyfi and Nakamura Koenami became stars, drawing loyal audiences and commanding high salaries from exhibitors. The art, today, is carried on by a small group of specialized performers who have been apprenticed by the preceding generations of benshi, creating a continuous lineage back to the original performers. Pairing rare prints and new restorations of Japanese classics, this weekend-long series features three of Japan’s most renowned contemporary benshi, Ichirō Kataoka, Kumiko Ōmori and Hideyuki Yamashiro, performing their unique art live on stage in Japanese with English subtitles. Every performance and screening will be accompanied by a musical ensemble with traditional Japanese instrumentation.
The Dull Sword [Namakura Gatana] (1917)
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. The Dull Sword is the oldest known surviving example of moving image anime, simply drawn but highly expressive in its satirical take on period genre conventions.
DCP, silent, tinted, 5 min. Director: Junichi Kōchi.
The Immigrant (1917)
One of seven films written and directed by Charlie Chaplin on the National Film Registry, The Immigrant follows the Tramp’s delightfully slapstick comic misadventures from the deck of a steamship sailing by the Statue of Liberty to the streets of America where penury and romance follow in short order. Working with essential on-screen collaborators Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell, Chaplin reworked the storyline and gags on the fly during production to craft this iconic comedy.
DCP, b&w, silent, 24 min. Director: Charlie Chaplin. Screenwriter: Charlie Chaplin, Vincent Bryan, Maverick Terrell. With: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell.
Not Blood Relations (1916)
Based on a contemporary-set novel by Yanagawa Shun'yo, Not Blood Relations was adapted to the Japanese stage with multiple film versions to follow, including director Naruse Mikio’s take in 1932. Director Inoue Masao also stars in this 1916 adaption which follows the destruction of a businessman and his family as mounting scandals reawaken lingering hatreds and induce new crimes. This surviving fragment features three sequences from the original film, including its denouement.
DCP, b&w, silent with Japanese intertitles, 12 min. Director: Inoue Masao. Cast: Inoue Masao, Kinoshita Kichinosuke, Akimoto Kikuya.
The Oath of the Sword (1914)
The rediscovery of The Oath of the Sword in 2016 and its subsequent restoration by the Japanese American National Museum and George Eastman Museum brought a lost film back to the screen and illuminated a long-overlooked facet of early film history. A tragic tale of ambition and love betrayed, it was produced by a Los Angeles-based company founded by Japanese immigrants and featured Japanese actors in the lead roles, making it the earliest known Asian American film production.
DCP, tinted, silent, 31 min. Director: Frank Shaw. With: Tomi Morri, Miss Hisa Numa, Yutaka Abe.
DCP, silent, 102 min. Director: Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenwriters: Kennosuke Tateoka, Yasunaga Higashibōjō, Shinji Masuda. With: Takako Irie, Tokihiko Okada, Ichirō Sugai.
The Vindictive Snake (1932)
A vengeful ghost takes center stage in this rarely seen, early Japanese horror film shot in Okinawa and Hawaii. An immigrant story gone wrong, it stars Okinawan native Seizen Toguchi, who also wrote the script, as a husband who emigrates with his wife from Okinawa to Oahu where they find work on a sugarcane plantation. When she contracts leprosy, he abandons her and flees back to Japan only to be driven mad, years later, by her spirit, transformed into the serpent of the title. A seminal genre work with roots in Okinawan folklore, The Vindictive Snake is the oldest known narrative film shot in Okinawa.
DCP, tinted, silent, 71 min. Director: Jirō Yoshino. Screenwriter: Seizen Toguchi. With: Seizen Toguchi.
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