Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Taki no shiraito [The Water Magician] (1933)

This late Japanese silent feature film, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, stars Takako Irie, Tokihiko Okada and Ichiro Sugai.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print that is moderately worn and coarse in image detail, with some picture jitters throughout the film. Viewers must endure some footage that is contrasty to the point that facial features are almost blasted-out to white and an overall lack of image detail. The source print is for the most part complete but it is fairly obvious when there are gaps in the narrative and when a still photograph is used toward the end of the film that this is due to missing footage.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack of traditional Japanese music and other preexisting recordings, with two different benshi narration: one is the modern narration by female benshi Midori Sawato and the second by male benshi Shunsui Matsuda was presumably originally prepared for the release of the 16mm print used for this edition. Each of the benshi narrations feature optional English subtitles of the benshi commentary that must be selected independently for the correct translation. The narration is valuable for the continuity of story when it bridges the gaps of missing footage in the print.

Supplemental material includes an introduction to the Digital Meme DVD series of Japanese silent films with a historical overview of the benshi tradition by Midori Sawata (2 minutes), and a video afterword on the work of Kenji Mizoguchi and the evolving style of Japanese films by historian Tadao Sato presented in Japanese with English subtitles (14 minutes).

To our knowledge, this is the only edition of this silent Mizoguchi film available on home video.

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