Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi startled audiences with a strikingly stylish spine-tingler, meticulously crafting an ambitious anthology epic to tell four haunted folk tales of the supernatural. Kwaidan, translated from the old Japanese word for ghost stories, remains one of cinema’s most indelible spectral spectacles, boldly beautiful, eerily patient, and chillingly atmospheric, featuring stunningly expressionistic color cinematography and unsettling sound design in its four legendary fables: The Black Hair, The Woman of the Snow, Hoichi the Earless, and In a Cup of Tea. This is the 161 minute “international” cut of the film.
“An assembly of ghost stories that is among the most beautiful films I’ve seen” – Roger Ebert
“Couple these sound effects and voices with some remarkable pictorial images and the consequence is a horror picture with an extraordinarily delicate and sensuous quality.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
