Teinosuke Kinugasa(1896-1982)
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Former female impersonator who entered films in 1917 as an actor,
turned to directing in 1922 and made some of the most formally
brilliant Japanese films of the following decades. The few of
Kinugasa's early works to have reached the West betray a highly mature,
sophisticated talent. His best-known silent films are _Kurutta Ippeji (1926)_, an old
print of which was found by Kinugasa in his attic and re-released in
the 1970s, and Crossroads (1928), the first Japanese film to be commercially
released in Europe. Both have been hailed for their inventive camera
work, which has been compared to that of the celebrated German
expressionist films being made during the same period. (It was not
until 1929 that Kinugasa himself traveled abroad and encountered
European directors and their films.) In the 1950s and 60s Kinugasa made
a number of period dramas noted for their sumptuous color and
imaginative use of the wide screen; Gate of Hell (1953) was named best film at the
1954 Cannes Film Festival and won an Oscar for best foreign
film.