Rampo (1994) aka The Mystery of Rampo

Kazuyoshi Okuyama's film about Japan's most famous writer of detective mysteries and horror, Edogawa Rampo, is less a traditional biopic (it really is not a biopic at all), and more a paean of love to the artistic process, and the worlds that literature and cinema can take us to. Rampo's new novel, Osei Tojo, about a woman who kills her husband by locking him in a nagamochi, has been banned by the censorship board for being "detrimental to public morality". Later, at the wrap party for the new film adaptation of Rampo's Kogoro Akechi series, he meets the mysterious Shizuko, whose husband, it turns out, suffocated to death in a nagamochi, and has been accused of murder by the public. Fascinated by this link between his banned novel, and real life, Rampo becomes fixated on Shizuko, and soon his inner world, where he is super-detective Kogoro Akechi, begins to bleed into his outer world, where he is just a meek writer, and Rampo finds himself caught up in a dazzling and erotic mystery with Shizuko at the center. In its combination of surrealism, animation, and erotica, The Mystery of Rampo is a fascinating gem. On a personal level, I found myself struck by Okuyama's depiction of Rampo, this mild-mannered writer who lives in a world where he can be the hero and get the girl, and indulge in his kinky fantasies. One can consider this film more of a portrait of Rampo's soul, as opposed to the actual Edogawa Rampo. As the lyrical soundtrack by Akira Senju played, and these fantastical images floated by on screen, I found myself swept up by my own melancholy longing for romance and adventure. Though very few of Rampo's works have been translated into English, the films I have seen based on them are ultimately never about the murder mystery or the horror, but rather desire, the desire to be understood, the desire to no longer be on the outside looking inside as they say. Rampo the writer broke the taboos of the era he lived in. Originally, Okuyama had hired Rintaro Mayuzumi to direct the film, but was unhappy with the final cut, so he fired Mayuzumi, re-shot forty percent of the movie, and edited together his own version, the one that has received wide distribution. The other version is available, and it will be interesting to see how it compares to this one. But what we have here is a film of sensuous beauty and imagination, a film that all artistic types will connect with.