Kôzaburô Yoshimura – Bijo to kairyu AKA The Beauty and the Dragon (1955)

Equally successful was Yoshimura’s 1955 The Beauty and the Dragon (Bijo to Kairyu), a period-film in which the famous Kabuki play Narukami was brought throughly up to date. Somewhat in the manner of Henry V, the film opens with a reconstruction of a classical performance of the play, accurately recreating a historical presentation in the proper style; it then moves, as a film, into a more cinematic interpretation. As in the Olivier movie, the acting style shifts from stage technique to cinema technique, and Yoshimura’s aim, like Olivier’s, was not a total reconstruction of the past but the use of a historically literal presentation as means toward something more modern in conception.

The film was highly praised by the Kabuki authorities, not becausye it was a literal reproduction, but because it was a freely-interpreted performance which was completely in the spirit of the original. Nobuko Otowa’s interpretation of the princess who sets out to tempt the self-righteous priest was, on the outside, perfectly correct as to period, but, underneath, the princess has the mind of a postwar woman. Some film critics, however, did not prove so understanding and completely misunderstood the director’s use of satire, through which he commented on present-day events. So they accused Yoshimura’ of “disrespect for the classics.” Still, if we are to have Kabuki in the films, Yoshimura showed how to make it a throughly cinematic experience.

Kozaburo Yoshimura - (1955) The Beauty and the Dragon.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 39 min
Size: 	1.23 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	716x480 ~> 716x537
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 576 kb/s
BPP: 	0.191
Audio
#1:  	new 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/36FEC72DF4564ED/Kozaburo_Yoshimura_-_(1955)_The_Beauty_and_the_Dragon.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/0007A6060086620/Kozaburo_Yoshimura_(1955)_The_Beauty_and_the_Dragon_-_English_03.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English