Jigokumon

It's been a little while since I've done a post on a foreign film, and as I've been stating I've got a bit of a backlog of foreign films on my DVR, to the point that I've had any number of them expire before even getting around to watching them. As an example, Un carnet de bal was on overnight and I had the previous recording on my DVR, but when I went to watch it in conjunction with the upcoming showing, it had expired. A film that I watched just before it expired showed up during 31 Days of Oscar: Gate of Hell.

The movie is set in medieval Japan during a short period known as the Heiji Rebellion, in which a couple of competing groups of samurai were battling for control of the government. Endo Morito (Kazuo Hasegawa) is loyal to daimyo Kiyomori, whose family is under threat from another group of samurai. To get the rest of the family to safety, Kiyomore comes up with a ruse: his sister's official carriage will be ridden not by his high-ranking sister, but a lady-in-waitng, Kesa (Machiko Kyo). Morito is to accompany that carriage while the daimyo's family makes it to safety. Morito gets Kesa to safety, although not without some difficulty, and falls in love with her along the way.

After the war is over, Kiyomori wants to reward Morito for his loyalty, willing to grant Morito one favor. Morito's wish is to have a marriage arranged between him and Kesa. Normally, their social classes wouldn't have resulted in them ever meeting each other, but Kiyomori could make it happen with his stature. There's only one catch: in the meantime, Kesa got married to someone who is of her social stature, Imperial Guard member Wataru (Isao Yamagata). Kiyomori could have tried to arrange a marriage between Morito and Kesa had she not been married, but he can't really force Kesa and Wataru to get a divorce.

Morito, for his part, isn't about to take no for an answer. If this were Hollywood, it would be the basis for some sort of noir on the theme of obsession, but this is medieval Japan so the movie takes a completely different tone. There's a slow buildup as first Morito tries to win Kesa's affection by winning the big horse race. When that doesn't work, Morito tries more direct means. But Kesa and Wataru aren't so willing to see Morito, since he's already shown himself to have a violent temper. Kesa's maidservant lies about Kesa's whereabouts, leading Morito to threaten to kill Kesa's aunt if Kesa won't talk to him.

It leads up to a climax in which Morito plans to kill Wataru, which would leave him free to marry Kesa if she's a widow. But the plan doesn't necessarily, well, go according to plan....

Gate of Hell won an honorary Oscar for the Best Foreign Film, having been released before that was an official competitive category. It also won a competitive Oscar, for color costume design. Those costumes, along with the color cinematography and production design, are all quite good. On the negative side, however, Gate of Hell is an extremely slow burn as a movie, being the dramatic equivalent of a one-joke comedy. That slowness doesn't always work in the movie's favor, so some people may find it a bit of a slog even though it clocks in under 90 minutes.