Page of Madness
One of the most startling and striking silent films from Japan, PAGE OF
MADNESS was rediscovered by director Teinosuke Kinugasa in his storeroom
in the early 1970s and made available for re-release. It follows an
elderly man who voluntarily works at odd jobs in a lunatic asylum
where his wife is confined, having drowned her baby son in a fit of
madness many years earlier. He hopes one day to set her free. "The
film is a remarkable work of concentrated emotional power, seeking to
understand the nature of insanity while offering a staright narrative
(the wife's story) in flashback," observed The Faber Companion to
Foreign Film. Relying on its images, the film uses no inter-titles,
displaying breathtaking technical virtuosity: the director employs every
available camera device, in the style of German Expressionism, which was
unknown to him at the time. "A masterpiece of imagination and control,
it has not dated in 70 -odd years," Faber exclaims.
Phillip Johnston's original score for "Page of Madness" was premiered
on July 9th and 10th, 1998, at the The Walter Reade Theater, in
Lincoln Center, NYC. It was commissioned by
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and performed by The
Transparent Quartet. It has subsequently been performed at
Duke University in Durham, NC, and at M.I.T.'s Killian Hall
in Boston, Massachusetts.. It is available for bookings.
Some thoughts on making contemporary scores for silent films
Email Phillip Johnston.
return to front page