![]() She walks the path dividing life and death. But we already sense the answer from Meiko Kaji’s commanding presence, a glare that communicates how much evil she has seen and how much more she is willing to do.įurther answering the gang leader’s sputtering question, a gorgeously enraptured theme song-sung by Kaji herself, though in the third person-now plays as we watch her training for battle in picturesque locales: The morning has diedĮmbracing the darkness with her umbrella-sword “Who the hell are you?” asks the dying crime boss. One acrobatic somersault, one quick midair extraction of a sword from the umbrella’s handle, and four slashes/thrusts of her blade later, and the men have been cut down in a blood-spurting floral pattern splayed out like a Payback Bouquet in the snow. Suddenly, a gang leader approaches in his rickshaw, and his thugs demand that she get out of their way. A close-up of her face reveals something chilling about her eyes-bloodshot, calmly feral, unforgiving. With three minutes of off-the-cuff cinematic shorthand, a strange, precarious universe is born: a mind-melting witches’ brew of Rosemary’s Baby, Lady Macbeth, and “Snow White.” Immediately, there’s an overhead shot of a woman alone, demurely clothed, twirling a purple umbrella as snow falls on her path. you are an asura demon.” Stray snowflakes fall on the baby as the camera pans up to the barred window and the blizzard beyond the snow turns red as the title Lady Snowblood flashes boldly on-screen. Agonized, breathing heavily, she looks at the infant in horror and mournfully declares, “Yuki, you will live your life carrying out my vendetta. In a woman’s cell, the baby, attended only by red-robed inmates, is passed along to the sweat-draped new mother’s side. ![]() The slightly unsteady handheld cinematography creates an atmosphere of Grand Guignol fused with documentary rawness: immersive yet detached.Ī baby’s first cries break the silence as a series of captions tell us the time (“Meiji 7”-1874, the seventh year of Japan’s turbulent Meiji era) and place (“Tokyo Prison/Hachioji Branch/Kanagawa Prefecture”) a snowstorm rages outside. ![]() Before the opening credits of Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood (1973) roll, a restive camera prowls the corridor of a women’s penitentiary once upon a winter’s night. ![]()
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