Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Backward Flow [Gyakuryû] (1924)

This short samurai revenge film, directed by Buntaro Futagawa, features Japanese superstar Tsumasaburo Bando, with Kotaro Kataoka, Kanzaburo Arashi and Michisaburo Segawa.

Eshewing traditional camera set-ups, Futagawa employs several interesting tracking shots, unusually deep angles, multiple POVs within a sequence, deep focus shots, and only few right-angle camera positions in relation to set walls and the geometry of outdoor locations.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a 35mm preservation print that is significantly scuffed and scratched, with some brief overexposed sections, beginning nitrate decomposition, dust and speckling, frame instability, and other print flaws. Through these flaws the image itself is very-good. The second half of the film is enhanced with color-tints and color-toning.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack composed of preexisting music recordings with a modern female benshi narration.

Supplemental material includes an introduction to the Digital Meme DVD series of Japanese silent films with a historical overview of the benshi tradition by Midori Sawata (2 minutes); a video afterword on the work of Tsumasaburo Bando and the evolving style of Japanese films by historian Tadao Sato presented in Japanese with English subtitles (16 minutes); and a four-page insert booklet in Japanese and English.

This is our recommended home video edition of the film.

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