Smallpox Tale
1976-02-20 | 34 minutes
Plot Summary
The smallpox virus has created its own unique atmosphere in Terayama’s film where the skin of a bandaged adolescent and the surface of the filmic image are subjected to a bizarre ‘disturbance’ as snails cross the screen and nails are hammered into the skull of the ailing patient. Illness in this film is as much a psychic entity as a physical one and manifests itself in an array of theatrical tableaux from grotesque women rigorously brushing their teeth to a snooker game where the players in white face makeup behave like automata. A Tale of Smallpox uses a medical theme to chart the traumatic dream life of Terayama’s times, evincing deep-rooted concerns in the Japanese national psyche that hark back to the upheaval of Meiji modernisation and the devastation of World War Two.
Cast
Recommendations
Similar Movies
-
Reflets
-
Continu-discontinu
-
Danse
-
Tournoi
-
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
-
Begotten
-
Vous voulez une histoire?
-
3 Dreams of Horses
-
Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice
-
Dream
-
Chelsea Girls
-
Alien
-
Ten Minutes of Silence
-
Casta Diva
-
Night of Pan
-
A Motion Selfie
-
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
-
A 25 Year Old Gay Man Loses His Virginity to a Woman
-
Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head
-
Solitary