FILM (1964)

Onibaba
Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Sato
Director: Kaneto Shindo

Japanese cinema's ability to shock - and to push the boundaries of what its audience experiences - has long been one of its trademarks. It helps, of course, that the country and its culture offer a rich history of both fable and fact, peopled by all manner of the macabre.

In the two decades after the second world war, filmmakers were also keen to train their cameras on issues of identity, naturally, given all that had gone on before. And perhaps the greatest combination of these two factors - the dim, dark past and the state of play as it was in the current day - came in director Kaneto Shindo's twisted masterpiece Onibaba.

On the surface, the film is a retelling of an ancient yarn about a woman and her daughter-in-law who, after falling on hard times, lure passing samurai to their doom by with the promise of sex. However, once the warriors have their guard down - among other things - the pair rob and kill them, throwing their bodies into a dark pit. But jealously rears its ugly head when the daughter-in-law falls for a neighbour drawn into their sordid world and they begin an affair.

And here's where Shindo makes things really interesting. The old woman takes a mask from a victim and uses it to scare the daughter-in-law and her suitor, turning herself into a terrifying apparition, the stuff of nightmares. It's only with the mask on that the true feelings - true desires - of this demented old hag are fully expressed.

So it's a fable, on face value at least, but the link to the post-war mentality in Japan is obvious too. Shindo dares his audience to think about who they are and who they want to become - the face they want to show the world - as his country rebuilds itself in almost complete desperation.