Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

Man, the 60s were weird all over. Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses is a strange artifact of that wild decade, a bizarre experimental film which is part document of the youth counterculture, part a stylistic tale of the life of a drag queen, and part retelling of the Oedipus myth. Weird all over.


Funeral Parade follows Eddie, a drag queen (played by Peter, who later went on to star as the fool in Kurosawa’s Ran) who works as a hostess in a gay bar and who is having an affair with the head queen’s lover. We follow Eddie as she works, loves, and plays in 60s Tokyo. Among her friends are a group of radical leftist “artists”; their leader is a man named Guevera, who wears a fake beard and mustache to look more like Che himself. I think he looks more like Jesus. Those who think of Japan as not just another country, but a whole other world, will be shocked to learn that their young leftists were just as idealistic and annoying as their US counterparts.

Eddie’s story, though, is really just there to form a narrative core to the film. Her affair, her struggles, and even her parallel to the mythical Oedipus, are all used to give some cohesiveness to the other elements of the film, which are Matsumoto’s main concern. That is to say that Funeral Parade is primarily a vehicle for Matsumoto’s experimental film making, and a way for the filmmaker to explore the 60s counterculture.


The film is able to cover a lot of aspects of Japanese society, and is largely able to do so by keeping those aspects in the background, or at least by dealing with them as part of the story rather than as blatant historic, non-fictional inserts. Eddie and her friends introduce us to the drag queen scene in Tokyo, which I can only imagine is a recently-outed portion of Japanese culture. As well, the filmmakers interview homosexuals in an open and honest manner, though treating them as a new and unexplored part of society. Occasionally the film features American military, reminding the viewer that this all takes place during the American occupation of Japan. Finally, through Eddie we are introduced to the aforementioned group or leftist radicals and hippies, the sort you’d expect to see in Berkley. It certainly surprised me to learn how similar to America Japan was back in 69.

Matsumoto’s experimental film making seems especially well-suited to the film. In another context the bizarre editing and strange, symbolic inserts might seem ostentatious and out of place, but here it seems that the form of the film matches its content. Documenting a chaotic story and a chaotic era demands a chaotic form, I think, and a straight-up narrative wouldn’t deliver this. Among Matsumoto’s most striking tricks are some occasional speed-ups (think the ménage à trois scene in A Clockwork Orange) to accentuate frenetic, wild action; breaking of the fourth wall, in which the actors are interviewed, documentary-style, and in which you actually get to see the crew filming the scenes; and, perhaps most successfully, an argument between Eddie and another queen which is done manga-style, with voice bubbles instead of spoken dialogue.


Eureka’s “Masters of Cinema” line--a kind of Criterion Collection for Britain, I think--has released a really swell edition of Funeral Parade of Roses, and the good news is that it’s NTSC rather than PAL, so it should work in most players (at least, that’s my experience). Funeral Parade of Roses sure ain’t for everyone, and I be lying if I said that all of its experiments were successful ones; however, for Japanese movie buffs or cinephiles, the allure of the film is its place as a historical document, as a weird and wild symbol of 60s counterculture and experimentalism.

Shura (1971)

Shura begins with the setting of the sun. It is the last time color, or the light of day, will enter into the world of the film. Only darkness remains.

Certainly Toshio Matsumoto’s Shura is a dark film. In fact, that’s an understatement; in Shura, light has ceased to exist. Darkness encloses the actors, and the sets. Each and every shot seems to be crafted in such a way that the screen is almost 50% black. This striking visual scheme certainly fits the mood, which is one of utter desolation and despair.


Gengo (Katsuo Nakamura) is a broke ronin, living with one loyal retainer in a Spartan house with bare walls. He’s sold everything he owns, except his sword, seemingly to “keep” a woman, a low-level geisha named Koman (Yasuko Sanjo) with whom he has fallen in love. In actuality, he is a samurai named Soemon, who needs all the money he can get to pay off a 100 ryo debt. In doing so, he can return to favor with his lord and join 47 other ronin--the 47 samurai (or loyal ronin) of Japan’s national legend.

The catalyst which causes the ensuing tragedy comes when the ronin’s retainer, Hachiemon, arrives with the 100 ryo Gengo needs to buy his way back into the honorable vendetta. It's always money, isn't it? Sango (Juro Kara), a beneficiary of Gengo’s patronage, shows up immediately after this, explaining that Koman is going to be sold to another samurai. Her cost? 100 ryo.

To get to the point: Gengo, after much prodding, spends the 100 ryo he so desperately needs, in order to save Koman, who agrees to marry him. But, there’s a problem. Koman can't be married, at least, not again. Sango is actually Koman’s husband. The two of them have played Gengo, and in doing so have stripped him of his love, his money, and his honor.

Gengo doesn’t take this well.


Though he’s initially ruined by the revelation, Gengo soon comes to realize the extent of the dishonor that's been done to him. The rest of the film details Gengo’s all-consuming quest for vengeance, and it does so with bleak, powerful visuals that seem to bring into clear focus the true horror of violence.

To the average viewer of samurai cinema, Gengo’s initial actions hardly seem beyond the pale. He is, after all, a samurai, a member of a cast distinguished by its two swords and its exclusive franchise on violence. That he chooses to wield his swords against those who wronged him seems quite in keeping with the cinematic samurai tradition.

Not so fast, says Matsumoto. Violence is not a clean, sanitized event, and vengeance can never truly be justified. As Gengo becomes consumed by his fury, he becomes less and less a man, and more a demon. When people die by his sword, they die terribly, and the graphic and intense depictions of their deaths only reinforces the brutality of Gengo’s “justice.”


Matsumoto is primarily an experimental filmmaker, with the vast majority of his work done in the genre of the short film. Only four times, to my knowledge, did he make full length features. He’s probably most well known (this is a relative term) as the director of Funeral Parade of Roses, the film that (supposedly) inspired Stanley Kubrick when he made A Clockwork Orange. While Shura is a very straightforward story, elements of Matsumoto’s background in experimental film seem to find their way in. The film is certainly shot by someone who is just as concerned with the visual look as he is with the story itself.

While Shura never dips off into total surrealism, the film remains oneiric throughout. The viewer is never absolutely sure that what he is seeing is actually taking place, or if it is actually a dream. After all, the film starts with a precognitive dream, and more than once the film depicts the contents of Gengo’s mind--how he hopes things might play out--as though they were real. Finally, it’s never really certain if Gengo is becoming “demon-like” with his actions, or if it should be understood like a horror movie, in that Gengo is actually becoming a monster. In a sense, it hardly matters; the evil wrought by Gengo is the evil wrought by man, and the evils against him (there are plenty) are certainly human as well.

To date, Shura doesn’t have a DVD release (that I know of) outside of Asia. It’s a shame, really. Hopefully Masters of Cinema, who released Funeral Parade of Roses in Britain, might look into this one in the future. It would certainly be worth it.

Mother Joan of the Angels (1960)

Eight demons possess Mother Joan of the Angels: Behemoth, Ballam, Isaacaron, Gresil, Amon, Asmadeus, Leviathan, and Clootie. How can one man, her exorcist, Father Joseph Surin, hope to save her?

Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od aniolow), like Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) is loosely based on the 1634 case of the Loudon nuns. In Loudon, France, a group of Ursuline nuns were supposedly possessed, due to the actions of Father Urbain Grandier, who was eventually burned at the stake for witchcraft. While the nuns remained ‘possessed,’ a group of expert exorcists--the Jesuit Jean-Joseph Surin among them--attempted to cleanse them in a series of public exorcism, which reportedly gathered groups of up to 7,000 people. The possessed nuns became something of a tourist attraction.


Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels begins with Father Surin (Mieczyslaw Voit) prostrating himself before the crucifix. He has just arrived, and he is uncertain that he is up to the task. The villagers, oddly enough, don’t seem to take the possession very seriously--it’s more-or-less a good source for rumours. It’s explained that the priests allow the common people to see the possessed nuns, since proof of demon possession, paradoxically, acts as proof of God’s existence.

When Surin meets Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka), he finds that she is very forthcoming about her possession. It all stems from Father Grandier, she explains, and now the evil is within her.


The actions of the possessed nuns seems rather tame by today’s standards. Most of the lesser nuns--never named--flounce about in a rather un-nunly fashion, but most of the blasphemies are left for Mother Joan. Sadly, you’ll never hear her shout anything like “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!”, and so hers is a lesser possession in the annals of filmdom. Still, she does do a lot of her own tumbling, and a few awkward contortions, which are enough to convince Father Surin that the possession is sincere. Still, it’s unclear to me if Mother Joan’s relatively sedate possession is due to constraints of the time and place, or if Kawalerowicz intended to cast reasonable doubt on the nature of Mother Joan’s complaint.

Surin, a self-flagellator, is deeply affected by Mother Joan’s actions. It makes him doubt his own skills, and possibly his own religion. He also seems weirdly attracted to Joan’s sins. In one scene, both of them are shown in the same room, and, though separated, both simultaneously flog their own bare backs in acts of contrition. Both are naked, from the waste up, and both are performing a strictly physical act. This works as Mother Joan of the Angel’s sex scene, I think.


As Surin begins to doubt more and more, he seeks out the advice of a Rabbi. The Rabbi makes a series of ominous statements, which Surin doesn’t seem to understand: that the presence of demons might only be the absence of angels; that all things, good or wicked, are based on love; that Father Surin and the Rabbi are one and the same. And, indeed, the Rabbi is Father Surin, in as much as it is obviously Voit playing him as well. But what do all these things mean? And how does it help Surin?


Mother Joan of the Angels is beautifully shot on black and white film. I haven’t seen as much Bergman as I probably should, but I was reminded of The Seventh Seal, at least visually, while watching this. The film is very stark, and the two leads, Voit and Winnicka, seem to have been chosen as much for their acting as for their piercing eyes. Many of the shots are expertly composed, and aside from some jump-edits (which might be the DVD, for all I know) the film is well-executed.

The DVD by Polart is, simply put, one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The features are slim (a write-up on the director and the leads, as well as advertising for other Polart DVDs), but most importantly the quality of the film image is terrible. On top of that, the subtitles are down-right laughable. Hardly a line goes by without some glaring issue of spelling or grammar, and occasionally a line is just missing. Still, this didn’t stop me from enjoying the film.