Shibukawa Bangorō Backdrop Blur
Shibukawa Bangorō Poster
Japan
5.2 1h 4m

Shibukawa Bangorō

A film on the life of Shibukawa Bangorō, the founder of the Shibukawa-ryū school of jūjutsu. To paraphrase Satō Tadao’s blurb on the back cover of the video, this is an important film for three reasons. 1. it is an almost perfectly well preserved copy of one of only a few full-length movies still available of the first superstar in Japanese cinema history, the very famous Onoe Matsunosuke. 2. it uses a method that was common in the silent era, the dyeing/tinting of film to mark given moments of day (for ex., blue for night-time) or given situations (for ex., red for fire) – and even though most films that used this technique have been redeveloped in straight b&w, this one is available in its original form. 3. it is an early SFX (special effects) movie that uses the basic tools of the trade - a great action movie full of swordsmanship and monsters (bakemono).

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Top Cast

  • Matsunosuke Onoe

    Matsunosuke Onoe

  • Kohaku Arashi

    Kohaku Arashi

  • Shôen Kataoka

    Shôen Kataoka

  • Tomiyasu Ikeda

    Tomiyasu Ikeda

  • Sennosuke Nakamura

    Sennosuke Nakamura

  • Utagoro Onoe

    Utagoro Onoe

  • Kijaku Ôtani

    Kijaku Ôtani

  • En'ichirō Jitsukawa

    En'ichirō Jitsukawa

  • Tamanokyoku Onoe

    Tamanokyoku Onoe

Overview

A film on the life of Shibukawa Bangorō, the founder of the Shibukawa-ryū school of jūjutsu. To paraphrase Satō Tadao’s blurb on the back cover of the video, this is an important film for three reasons. 1. it is an almost perfectly well preserved copy of one of only a few full-length movies still available of the first superstar in Japanese cinema history, the very famous Onoe Matsunosuke. 2. it uses a method that was common in the silent era, the dyeing/tinting of film to mark given moments of day (for ex., blue for night-time) or given situations (for ex., red for fire) – and even though most films that used this technique have been redeveloped in straight b&w, this one is available in its original form. 3. it is an early SFX (special effects) movie that uses the basic tools of the trade - a great action movie full of swordsmanship and monsters (bakemono).

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