An Unforgettable Grudge

1926 HistoryAction 83 minutes (original release) Directed by Daisuke Itō

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About An Unforgettable Grudge

In the last years of the Edo period, brothers Kazuma and Tsugio Iki both love Yukie. A sword fight blinds Tsugio. Yukie nurses him and falls in love with him instead. Kazuma, with nothing left he cares about, takes on a much larger force alone and is killed.

Cast & crew

More about An Unforgettable Grudge

Daisuke Ito wrote the story and directed it, his first film after joining Nikkatsu and his first with Denjiro Okochi. Rokuzo Watarai photographed it. The release was six reels. The last fight, which now fills the surviving reel, originally ran more than three reels, over 30 minutes. Okochi plays Kazuma, Yuzuru Kume plays Tsugio, Yayoi Kawakami plays Yukie, Utagoro Onoue plays Sozaemon Numata, and Momonosuke Ichikawa plays Tomigoro.

Themes

  • Two brothers in love with Yukie
  • A blinding that switches her loyalty
  • A last fight with nothing left to keep
  • Kazuma Iki
  • Tsugio Iki
  • Yukie
  • late Edo
  • sword fight
  • blindness
  • last stand

Making

Ito and Okochi began their long run of period films with this picture. The fragment that remains is the last stand: one swordsman against a crowd.

Look

Rokuzo Watarai shot it. In the surviving fight the cut jumps from wide views of the melee to tight shots of Okochi's face.

Music

Silent, with Japanese intertitles. The 2013 Pordenone screening added Ichiro Kataoka's benshi commentary and a score by John Sweeney.

Preservation

One reel survives from the original six. The National Film Center in Tokyo digitally restored and tinted that fragment in 2010. At 16 frames per second it runs about 15 minutes.

Notes

  • The title Chokon is a Chinese word for a grudge that cannot be forgotten. Tadao Sato's filmography renders it as "a great regret.
  • The National Film Center's 2010 digital restoration is tinted, with Japanese intertitles.
  • Giornate del Cinema Muto screened the fragment in 2013: 875 feet, about 15 minutes at 16 frames per second.
  • That Pordenone show used benshi commentary by Ichiro Kataoka and music by John Sweeney.
  • What survives is the climax, not the love story that leads to it.

Scenes

  • Kazuma, alone, fights a force that fills the frame, the camera cutting in hard on his face.

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Chokon (AKA An Unforgettable Grudge) by Daisuke Ito (1926).webm)
  • National Film Archive of Japan (2010 restoration)