A Crazy Page and Crossroads

Kinugasa’s early films, though they may occasionally try to create what it feels like to be one of the characters, are much more concerned with the impression the creator himself felt when first confronted with his material. He picks and chooses scenes the sum total of which is the impression of the emotion itself. Just as Eisenstein gives us an impression of a massacre in Potemkin’s Odessa steps sequence, so Kinugasa gives us the impression of an insane asylum [in his A Crazy Page]. The last film that Kinugasa made with his own company was one of the milestones of Japanese cinema. It was Crossroads, later shown in Europe as Shadows o the Yoshiwara. When Crossroads was shown in France the critics there also liked it, remarking on its editing techniques and its lighting. Kinugasa’s use of close-ups was also compared favorably to that of Carl Dreyer’s in the newly released La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.