My second foray into the world of Yasuzo Masumura, after being disappointed by Afraid to Die, was everything I had hoped my first encounter would have been. Along with Kurosawa's High and Low, and Uchida's A Fugitive from the Past, A Wife Confesses is one of the classics from the golden age of Japanese crime cinema. Ayako Takigawa is a beautiful widow on trial for killing her husband in a mountain climbing accident. She maintains that if she had not cut his rope, she would have died, but the prosecution says she deliberately killed him to be free of his tyrannical rule, and get with the handsome Osamu Kôda. Masumura is a master of sequencing. The entire film fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, with no shot out of place, and every cut timed perfectly. There is something about watching a film this well constructed that has the quality of fine poetry. His widescreen black and white images are crisp and lucid, and
Riichirô Manabe's esoteric soundtrack recalls the work of the great Toru Takemitsu in its sparse, avant-garde composition. Masumura maintains a curious detachment from the melodrama on display here, and the audience is relegated to the role of something like a scientist observing alien specimen. The near-complete breakdown in logic during the climax is easier to swallow because of Masumura's detachment. Ayako Wakao gives a searing performance as the titular wife, striking a perfect balance between sympathy and suspicion. You never know where you stand with her, and it is this uncertainty, the same kind of uncertainty evoked by Joseph Cotton as Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, that really makes this film what it is. Is she the embodiment of feminine evil? Or just a human being looking out for her own interests as anyone would? Masumura never passes judgment, and maybe, we are not supposed to either.
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