“Returning to cinemas in a sumptuous new restoration, Kobayashi Masaki’s resplendent quartet of Japanese ghost stories is one of the great humanist director’s signature achievement’s. Nominated for an Oscar, and winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, Kwaidan adapts four supernatural tales (themselves based on traditional Japanese folklore) by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek Irish writer who settled in Japan in the late 19th century. They relate the chilling accounts of a samurai returning to the wife he once abandoned, a young woodcutter’s life-altering encounter with a demonic snow maiden, a sightless musician summoned by apparitions to sing of an epic sea battle, and a warrior discovering the reflection of a mysterious stranger in his teacup. Expressively shot in colour and widescreen on theatrical, hand-painted soundstages, Kwaidan was, at the time, the most expensive Japanese film yet made. It is presented here in its original three-hour cut.“ —The Cinematheque
