The Face of Another (film)

The Face of Another
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Produced by Hiroshi Teshigahara[1]
Screenplay by Kobo Abe[1]
Based on Tanin no kao
by Kobo Abe
Starring
Music by Toru Takemitsu[1]
Cinematography Hiroshi Segawa[1]
Edited by Fusako Shuzui[1]
Production
companies
  • Teshigahara Pro
  • Tokyo Eiga Co.[1]
Distributed by Toho
Release date
  • 15 July 1966 (1966-07-15) (Japan)
Running time
 121 minutes[1]
Country Japan

The Face of Another (他人の顔, Tanin no kao) is a 1966 Japanese New Wave film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and based on the novel of the same name written by Kōbō Abe. The story follows an engineer, Okuyama, whose face is severely burnt in an unspecified work-related accident and is given a new face in the form of a lifelike mask.

Plot

Okuyama's face was disfigured in an industrial accident, and his face is completely covered in burns; he wears bandages to cover them. He visits Dr. Hira, a psychiatrist who is able to fashion a "mask" for Okuyama to wear which is indistinguishable from the face on which it is modeled.

Hira and Okuyama pay a man 10,000 yen to serve as the model for the mask, and the mask is built and fitted onto Okuyama. Hira cautions Okuyama that the mask may change his behavior and personality so much that he will cease to be the same person that he was. Hira believes that this disassociation with his identity will cause Okuyama to lose his sense of morality if he is not careful. Okuyama tells no one that he has received the mask, and simply lives as a new man, telling his wife that he is traveling on business while he rents an apartment nearby.

Interleaved throughout the film is a separate tale (present in Abe's original novel in the form of a movie the protagonist watches at a cinema and then recounts) of a young woman whose otherwise beautiful face suffered a severe disfigurement on the right cheek, and right side of the neck. She works in a home for World War II veterans and lives with her brother. The imagery of the film, as well as her obsessive worry about the coming of another war, and her asking her brother if he still remembers the sea at Nagasaki (presumably from their childhood there), all suggest that her scars came as a result of the atomic bombing of that city.[2] Like Okuyama, she is embarrassed by her disfigurement.

Cast

Themes

The film uses several doublings of shots, both by repeating shots verbatim and by placing the main character in nearly identical shots twice. The most obvious example is in Okuyama's two separate rentals of apartments, once masked, and once with his new face. These doublings highlight Okuyama's double existence.[2]

Production

One recurring image is the large and small severed ears which appears in the scenery in several scenes. These ears were designed and sculpted by Japanese sculptor Tomio Miki.[2]

Hira's office, a strange blank space with glass partitions, was designed by architect Arata Isozaki, a friend of Teshigahara's.[2] The glass walls are painted with Langer's lines and the Vitruvian Man.

Release

The Face of Another had a roadshow on 15 July 1966 in Japan where it was distributed by Toho.[1] The film received general release in Japan on 23 September 1967.[3]

The film received a theatrical release in the United States on 9 June 1967.[1] It was re-issued in the United States in May 1975 by Rising Sun and Toho.[1]

Reception

Critical reception

The Face of Another was not well received upon its initial release, with audiences and critics largely feeling that it did not live up to Teshigahara's earlier film The Woman in the Dunes.[2] Although it was successful in Japan, the film was a critical and financial failure internationally at the time of its release.[2]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "As fiction it's too fanciful to be seriously compelling and too glib to be especially thought-provoking."[4]

Awards

It won awards at the Mainichi Film Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Film Score.[1]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Galbraith IV 2008, p. 231.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 James Quandt, Video Essay included on the Criterion Collection DVD release of The Face of Another.
  3. ↑ Galbraith IV 2008, p. 232.
  4. ↑ Canby, Vincent. "The Screen:'Face of Another' Joins Japanese Festival - The New York Times". New York Times.com. Vincent Canby. Retrieved 27 September 2018.

Sources

  • Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 1461673747.
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