Seijun Suzuki’s The Taisho Trilogy (ZIGEUNERWEISEN, KAGERO-ZA, AND YUMEJI) Limited Edition from Arrow Films Academy is a beautiful set that’s packed with 6 discs (Blu-rays and DVDs dawn this edition). Tony Rayns also offers insightful introductions to all films.
Purchase Yours Today Here – The Taisho Trilogy
After over a decade in the wilderness following his firing from Nikkatsu for BRANDED TO KILL (1967), maverick director Seijun Suzuki 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 KAGERO-ZA (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 his more 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.
LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
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
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring writing on the films by critic Jasper Sharp and more.
