Red Angel
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Synopsis
Directed by Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast), Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse.
When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction.
Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with Ayako Wakao (A Wife Confesses, Irezumi) and features startling monochrome scope cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi (Fires on the Plain, An Actor’s Revenge).
Picture 6/10
Continuing through the work of director Yasuzo Masumura, Arrow Video presents his 1966 film Red Angel on Blu-ray, delivered here in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on a dual-layer disc. The 1080p/24hz high-definition encode is sourced from a hi-def master supplied to Arrow by Kadokawa Pictures.
As has been common so far with Arrow’s Masumura titles, Irezumi being the lone outlier so far, Red Angel's presentation is sourced from what is clearly an older restoration and master. Though certainly high-def, I get the feeling it was created with DVD more in mind. Restoration wise the image is surprisingly clean, Arrow more than likely having done their own run through to clean up any significant damage that may have remained, though some things still pop up. These “things” are mostly limited to slight frame jumps, flickering and pulsing, all of which are infrequent. Contrast appears to be boosted a bit, leading to hot whites. Blacks come off a little murky and grayscale is also limited.
Details are a bit hazy in the brighter and darker portions of a scene, but the mid-sections are fine, if never anything that could be called razor-sharp. There is always a bit of a fuzziness there. The encode itself ends up looking fine enough but the underlying digital master has clearly been managed. Even though grain is there to an extent, it has a filtered, scrubbed look, which also appears to have impacted detail levels.
Despite all of that the presentation is still okay thanks to whatever touch-ups Arrow was able to do, and it does come out looking better than a couple of other Masumura titles from the label. Still, it’s an enormous shame Arrow or Kadokawa were unable to perform a new restoration.
Red Angel - Screen Captures
Audio 5/10
The Japanese PCM single-channel monaural soundtrack is fine for what it is but shows its age. The soundtrack doesn’t sound to be filtered at all, but dialogue and music can come off a little harsh and range is next to non-existent. At the very least, there isn’t any severe damage or distortion present.
Extras 8/10
Features for this Masumura title are yet again not all that plentiful, but Arrow has thankfully rounded up a few excellent features well worth going through. Japanese cinema scholar David Desser starts things off with an audio commentary, following the one he provided Irezumi. Like that one there is a bit of a scripted feel, but he does well enough working through the film’s storyline and its placement along other war films that were coming out of Japan at the time. I don’t recall him ever mentioning the story on which the film is based (and in a common theme found through the features it appears no other participant on this edition has read it) yet he admires how Masumura tells the story, mentioning its economy of storytelling and how it manages to pack in so much through quick shots and visuals, moving things at a decent pace despite how employs a lot of long takes. On top of that, he also provides some historical context around the war and the specific time and place where the film is set. Definitely worth listening to.
Tony Rayns also provides a quick 12-minute introduction who not only talks about the film, its story, and its cast and crew, but he also talks about the wave of “revisionist” war films that were coming out around the time of the film’s release, which includes Fires on the Plain. The best feature on here, though, may be Jonathan Rosenbaum’s video essay on Masumura, Not All Angels Have Wings, running 14-minutes. Rosenbaum first explains how he became fascinated by Masumura’s work in the late 90’s and took on a project to explore his work, figuring he was able to see 40 or more of the director’s films. Interestingly, even though he claims it’s nowhere near his favourite, finding the last act to be overly sentimental, Red Angel was the first film he saw and the one that pushed him to delve deeper into the director’s work. He explains what caught his attention, referencing moments in the film, and it sounds as though what really grabbed him is that it felt like one Samuel Fuller’s own war films. Rosenbaum then works through his other films, and though they could be very different from one another they all clearly share a common perspective, with one common element being that Masumura’s films never passed judgement on their characters. He also talks about the films that did not work for him, including the rather dreadful Yukio Mishima starrer Afraid to Die. He also wasn't fond of Blind Beast, which Arrow has also released. Arrow has put out some great features around Masumura’s work but this may be the best one, providing a rather thorough overview of his work, and all in 14-minutes, too!
The disc then closes with two trailers, the first looking to be a teaser that plays up the exploitive/sensationalist aspects of the film a bit more, followed by a very small gallery featuring a handful of photos and posters, along with what looks to be a Japanese program for the film. The booklet then features an excellent essay by Irene González-López, who I must also point out provided one of my favourite commentaries in recent memory for Arrow’s edition of Masumura’s Giants and Toys. It’s a good essay and I’ll confess I’m a bit bummed she didn’t do the commentary for this one as well.
Like Arrow’s other Masumura titles it’s not a packed edition but the material is excellent.
Closing
Arrow puts together yet another terrific special edition for one of Masumura’s films. It’s just a shame a new restoration wasn’t on the table.
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