Covers February 26–28, 1936.

”'I know how you feel,' Reiko says quietly. 'And I will follow you wherever you go.'”

– intertitles

心中天網島 is based on a 1721 文楽 [#bunraku] puppet theatre play]. As traditional in this style of theatre, the puppeteers are in full view of the audience wearing all-black cloaks. 心中天網島 does the same, but substitutes the puppets with flesh and blood actors.

 

The puppeteers are 黒衣 [kuroko, litt. “black clad”, though there are colour variations depending on the scene's requirements], guiding the performers towards their destiny.

Expecting an uneventful night at the Seattle Crisis Clinic, volunteering psychology student Alan Newell is left to his own devices. Alan takes his books to study, it is quiet after all. Then a call, a woman. We learn she's called Inga (Anne Bancroft). She's drowsy. She has taken barbiturates and wants to talk while slipping away. While Alan fights to keep the woman on the line, attempts are made to trace the call.

“Do you think that not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth?”

– Mark Dyson

The Slender Thread is an excellent example of picturing the invisible. The two leads never meet, both bound to their setting. The call tracing scene, a very technical affair, bears echos of Soviet Montage. The warm #jazz soundtrack by Seattle's own Quincy Jones tones down the mechanics, making the human aspect even more harrowing, almost physical.

Japanese author Yukio Mishima was, besides an aesthete, a fierce proponent of Japanese nationalism. In 憂國, based on his short 1960 story, Mishima plays palace guard Lt. Shinji Takeyama. Despite being one of the instigators of an ultra-nationalist coup, Takeyama decides he cannot overthrow the government as it would mean having to kill his friends and be disloyal to the Emperor. Returning home, he and his bride Reiko (Yoshiko Tsuruoka) perform #切腹 (#seppuku / #HaraKiri), as in line with Takeyama's #samurai heritage.

 

Yūkoku is a #SilentFilm that plays out like #Noh #theatre, with an extreme emphasis on the beauty and love of death and loyalty respectively.

 

After Mishima's own seppuku in 1970, his widow ordered all copies of Yūkoku to be destroyed. In 2005, in Mishima's house, a pristine copy was uncovered in a tea box.

A young woman jumps out of a window, leaving behind her husband, an #antiques dealer. Sitting in their bedroom with the body lying in state, the widower remembers her. In his memory, she is nameless, abstract, a state not a life..

 

Robert #Bresson's Une femme douce is closely adapted from Fyodor #Dostoyevsky Кроткая [Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature] (1876).