ACF 521: Red Angel screens tonight in NY

Red Angel / Akai tenshi
Directed by Yasuzo Masumura
Starring Ayako Wakao
Japan, 1966, B&W, 95 min.

Set in China in 1939, when Japanese forces were fighting to subjugate the Chinese, Red Angel stars Ayako Wakao as Nurse Sakura Nishi. She is assigned to work in field hospitals very near the front lines. Despite trials and tribulations, she ministers to the injured with unstinting dedication. She also falls in love with Dr. Okabe (Shinsuke Ashida), who needs morphine shots to cope with the fact that he's not practicing medicine but instead is almost exclusively amputating limbs so that injured soldiers won't die.

Released the same year as Tattoo, which was also directed by Masumura and starred Wakao, this shows off a different side of her acting skills. Yeah, it's melodramatic at times, but it's still a great watch. The graphic depiction of "meatball surgery", with severed limbs thrown into piles, surpasses just about anything I can recall seeing on even the most serious episode of the TV series MASH. And the frank way in which Red Angel confronts intimate sexual topics, while not pictorially explicit, is remarkable and very adult.

ACF rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars - very highly recommended.

At 7:30 tonight, it'll be screening in New York as the second film in Japan Society's Mad, Bad... & Dangerous to Know film series. Note that while the film is unrated, because of the subject matter, it may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age or older.

Red Angel info and online ticket ordering available here.

Mad, Bad... & Dangerous to Know film series info available here.

And here's a link to what Patrick Galloway had to say about Red Angel in his blog last November.