RELEASE DATE: August 8, 2017
On August 8, 2017, Arrow Academy will be releasing Seijun Suzuki’s The Taisho Trilogy, which will include the following three films: Zigeunerweisen, Kageroza and Yumeji. Read the full details below.
After over a decade in the wilderness following his firing from Nikkatsu for Branded to Kill (1967), maverick director Seijun Suzuki (Voice Without a Shadow) returned with a vengeance with his critically-praised tryptic of cryptic supernatural dramas set during the liberal enlightenment of Japan’s Taisho Era (1912-26).
In the multiple Japanese Academy Award-winning Zigeunerweisen (1980), two intellectuals and former colleagues from military academy involve their wives in a series of dangerous sexual games. In Kageroza (1981), a playwright is drawn like a moth to a flame to a mysterious beauty who might be a ghost, while Yumeji (1991) imagines the real-life painter-poet Takehisa Yumeji’s encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past.
Presented together on Blu-ray for the first time outside of Japan, the films in the Taisho Trilogy are considered Suzuki’s masterpieces in his homeland. Presenting a dramatic turn from more his familiar tales of cops, gangsters and unruly youth, these surrealistic psychological puzzles drip with a lush exoticism, distinctively capturing the pandemonium of a bygone age of decadence and excess, when Western ideas, fashions, technologies and art fused into everyday aspect of Japanese life.
Special Features:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
- Original stereo audio (uncompressed on the Blu-ray)
- Optional English subtitles
- New introductions to each film by critic Tony Rayns
- Making-of featurette
- Vintage interview with Seijun Suzuki
- Limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Corey Brickley
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring writing on the films by critic Jasper Sharp and more.
Pre-order the Taisho Trilogy from Amazon.com today!
I’ve never even heard of these but color me intrigued. Thank you for the info!
This, ‘New Battles Without Honor & Humanity’, ‘Cops & Thugs’, ‘Doberman Cop’, ‘Werewold Guy’, ‘Cat Fight’, & ‘Headshot’…all due to be released by Arrow within just a few months. I may as well just change my salaries receiving bank account to theirs.
These are strange, brilliant films. You’ll rarely have more fun watching an ‘art film’ than when watching a Seijun Suzuki ‘art film.’ Zigeunerweisen might be the director’s very best work. I gotta get this set.