Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Downfall of Osen [Orizuru Osen] (1935)

This late Japanese silent feature film, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, stars the great Isuzu Yamada, with Daijirô Natsukawa, Mitsusaburô Ramon, Genichi Fuji and Ichiro Yosizawa.

Mizoguchi’s camera is quite active with dolly moves and whip pans. At times, we wish that a fluid head were available on the camera mount to minimize jerkiness in the pan moves.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a 35mm preservation print duplicated from materials that were quite worn with filmbase scuffing (could have benefited from wet gate duplication), long vertical scratches and a trace or two of beginning nitrate decomposition. Light dust and speckling remain, with occasional schmutz, emulsion chipping, timing marks, frame jitters, and other minor print flaws. The most distracting flaw is the occasional high amount of print wear, otherwise the picture is quite watchable.

The film is accompanied by a cobbled together music score from preexisting recordings, with optional modern benshi narration by Midori Sawata in Japanese and optional English, Chinese and Korean subtitles and contemporary benshi narration (possibly from the original sound release of the film) in Japanese but with no direct subtitle translation.

Supplemental material includes an introduction to the Digital Meme DVD series of Japanese silent films with a historical overview of the benshi tradition by Midori Sawata (2 minutes); a short film interpretation dance performance of a song Tôjin okichi (1930) from a 9.5mm reduction print (4 minutes); a video afterword on the work of Kenji Mizoguchi and the evolving style of Japanese films by historian Tadao Sato presented in Japanese with English subtitles (19 minutes); and a four-page insert booklet in Japanese and English.

We enthusiastically recommend this home video edition of the film.

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