TO SLEEP SO AS TO DREAM
A film review by Thomas E. Billings
Copyright 1991 Thomas E. Billings
Synopsis: In 1950s Japan, the daughter of an aging silent film actress is kidnapped. A young detective is hired to find and return the kidnapped young woman; the trail leads to the (Japanese subsidiary of) M. Pathe & Co., where the woman is trapped in a 1915 silent film! A (nearly) silent film that interweaves reality and dreams so skillfully that they are indistinguishable. A challenging but worthwhile film.
Japan (English subtitles), black-and-white, 1986, 81 minutes. Director/Writer: Kaizo Hayashi
This film is a tribute to Japanese silent films, particularly the films made in the final phase of the silent film industry. The story concerns an aging silent film actress, who hires a young private detective to find and return her daughter, Bellflower, who has reportedly been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. The detective is a strange fellow, who sits around eating hard-boiled eggs in huge quantities while he analyzes the ransom demand (delivered via tape recording), to hopefully find and return Bellflower.
The detective and his young assistant follow a long maze of clues to find Bellflower, only to eventually learn that she is trapped in a 1915 silent film from M. Pathe & Co., that has no ending! From here the story continues, with reality, magic and dreams intermingling so seam- lessly that it becomes impossible to determine what is reality, and what is a dream.
In the synopsis, I describe the film as "challenging but worthwhile", for a number of reasons. First, the film is completely silent except for some sound effects, the taped messages from the kidnappers, and a brief narration in one scene provided by a benshi, a person who was hired by Japanese theaters in the silent days to read the dialog to the audience. The challenge here is that modern audiences are used to sound, and may find the silent medium less interesting.
Another challenge for some is the slow way the story builds. At the screening, 3 or 4 people (from a rather small audience) walked out before the film even reached the midpoint (~40 minutes). This may have been due, in part, to the slow pace of plot development. However, there are rewards for patience, because the pace of the film increases just after the midpoint, and the film becomes very interesting.
The film accomplishes something that is not very common in cinema: the interleaving of (relative) reality and fantasy within a single story line in such a way that it is difficult to tell where the fantasy ends and reality begins. Other films where this is done include THE PEDDLER, an Iranian film I reviewed some months ago, and the last parts of BRAZIL (also TOTAL RECALL, if you consider the controversy over whether the adventures really happened, or were just a dream).
I recommend the film to fans of silent films, and to those interested in a film that blends reality and dreams.
Print Source: New Yorker Films.
Reviewer contact: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU
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