A Page of Madness (1926)

Could a film like this be made today? I highly doubt it. A Page of Madness is a perfect example of what cinema lost in the transition to sound. As others have noted, the story is next to impossible to follow. Roughly, it is about a man who works as a janitor in an insane asylum whose wife is a patient. She had attempted to drown (or did drown) their newborn child. Honestly, that is where any discernible plot ends. It would be helpful if the benshi narration had been recorded to accompany the recent restoration, but alas it is a miracle this even survived the war. After all, most of Japanese cinema prior to WWII was either destroyed or lost. But has an audiovisual experience, there are few works that match the expressionistic bravura on display here. It is a bit like Lang meets Eisenstein, but with a wholly Japanese flavor. The art deco sets, the rapid-fire editing, the layers of images on top of images, the melodrama, it all appeals very much to my own cinematic sensibilities. Kinugasa was very much a pioneer of his national cinema, and his influence can still be detected today. It is definitely worth checking this one out.