• 雄呂血 (Orochi)

10/31/24 (Thurs)

This silent film of 1925 apparently broke barriers by presenting an antihero fighting the corruption of the ruling class as opposed to the good samurai defending the masses. The video online has excellent Japanese narration by a professional benshi narrator, which I listened to briefly. But benshi tend to add their own commentary and imagined dialogue; silent films were not made with the assumption of any specific narration and, with the intertitles, are (or should be) perfectly understandable as is. I ended up turning the sound off, which worked just fine. The movie does rely too much on expository intertitles, some of which are very long and hard to read (at least on a television). Thank goodness for the English subtitles.

The title Orochi is not the serpent of Kabuki fame. Though it’s the same word in English, the characters here are a strange mix of unrelated kanji, apparently chosen at random (for instance, the middle character ro is simply part of the screenwriter’s name) when the authorities objected to the original Buraikan or ruffian (often mistranslated in the West as outlaw). The odd word presumably perplexed them enough to let it pass. The film was the first to be produced by the production company set up by its star, former Kabuki actor Bando Tsumasaburo, though it was the second one released. The actor, known popularly as Bantsuma, must have liked it: it’s the only of the 200+ films in which he appeared that he kept the original negatives. And what a film.

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