Red Angel (1966)

Essential Viewing

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 赤い天使

Director: Masumura Yasuzo

Writers: Kasahara Ryozo, Arima Yoriyoshi

Cinematographer: Kobayashi Setsuo

Composer: Ikeno Sei

Cast: Wakao Ayako, Ashida Shinsuke, Kawazu Yūsuke, Akagi Ranko, Senba Jotaro, Kita Daihachi

Masumura’s painfully visceral anti-war film – filled with agonisingly indelible scenes of pain and suffering, in which bone-sawingly repulsive sequences of field hospital surgery are followed by those of rooms full of cholera-sufferers vomiting and moaning, punctuated only by gang-rapes and pity-sex – claws continually at the sensibilities of the viewer until any remaining feelings about the romanticism of war are entirely and justifiably destroyed. Iain.Stott