THE GAY MASQUERADE

benten

An Intergendered Robin Hood in Glorious Widescreen

Venue: National Film Center
July 22 (Sat), 2017: 11:00, August 3, 2017 (Thu) 16:00
Official website: www.momat.go.jp/fc/exhibition/yukeru2017-7_9/#ex-14857
Theater website: www.momat.go.jp/english/fc/visit/information_map/
Tariff:  General: ¥520 / Students: ¥310 / Seniors: ¥310

Title: 弁天小僧 (BENTEN KOZO)
Director: Daisuke Ito (伊藤大輔)
Duration: 86 min

As part of its annual tribute series, In Memory of Film Figures We Lost 2015 – 2016, the National Film Center in Kyobashi will be screening the splendid The Gay Masquerade (a.k.a. The Jovial Rascals of Edo). While the lost film figure on the film is its sound designer, Kotaro Hayashi, there is brilliance on display across all production departments.

The Gay Masquerade (a.k.a. The Jovial Rascals of Edo), is a lavishly colorful, Daiei Scope widescreen film directed by prolific jidaigeki specialist Daisuke Ito (Diary of Chuji’s Travels series, Hangyakuji, writer of An Actor’s Revenge). The film won Blue Ribbon Awards for best actor for Raizo Ichikawa (who also nabbed the Kinema Junpo Award for the part) and for best cinematography, by acclaimed DP Kazuo Miyagawa, who also collaborated fruitfully with classic masters Mizoguchi, Ichikawa, Kurosawa and Shinoda.

The Gay Masquerade began life as a kabuki play in 1862, Shiranami gonin otoko (Shiranami Five Alliance, by Kawatake Mokuami; but it was later retitled after its much-loved lead character, Benten Kozo Kikunosuke, or Benten the Kid. Because Benten lives both as a man and a woman, s/he was acted by a male onnagata (specialist in female roles) playing a man pretending to be a woman (got that?). The story made the leap to cinema with the 1928 silent Benten Kozo by Teinosuke Kinugasa, with kabuki-onnagata-turned-movie-star Kazuo Hasegawa (An Actor’s Revenge) in the title role.

Ito’s widescreen version stars Raizo Ichikawa (Enjo/Conflagration) as the intergendered hero, an honorable thief who, with his Shiranami cohorts, goes about breaking into the storage houses of rich nobles like the oppressive Lord Koinuma, and distributing the bounty to the poor. He also continues living, as s/he has since early youth, quite convincingly as the high-born lady, Kiku. The contemporary images for the film played up the moment when Kiku’s disguise slips, and her/his masculine shoulder tattoos are revealed. The film costars Katsu Shintaro (Zatoichi), Kyoko Aoyama (I Live in Fear) and a cast of over 100 extras.

Although discussing earlier work, Japanese film historian Donald Richie lauded Daisuke Ito’s “aesthetic bravura” and his mastery at combining “guided narrative and unleashed spectacle.” Neither are in short supply in this underseen jidaigeki marvel.

National Film Center

 

 

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