Credits

  • Director

    Yasuzô Masumura

  • Screenwriter

    Kaneto Shindo

  • With

    Ayako Wakao, Kyoko Kishida, Eiji Funakoshi

  • Japan 1964. 90min

  • Courtesy of

    Kadokawa Corporation

  • Language

    Japanese

    With English subtitles

  • Certificate

    18 BBFC      

Introduction

Bored housewife Sonoko is infatuated by the younger Mitsuko. As the women embark on an affair, they are soon tangled in a psychosexual web of power games, blood oaths and suicide pacts. Gloriously framed in widescreen and told without moralising, Manji has no equivalent in Western cinema – unless you imagine Douglas Sirk with added sex and the melodrama dialled to eleven.

Robin Baker

Content warning

Contains theme of sexual obsession.

Restored in 4K at IMAGICA Entertainment Media Services from the scanning of original 35mm negative films of Agfacolor.

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