Kujira
About Kujira
Men and geisha laugh on a sailing ship until a storm and a whale's tail take the vessel down. Survivors fight over a woman pulled from the wreck. The whale swallows them, then blows the woman and three men out onto its back. Two men fall away, the whale kills the last man, and a narrator says the woman has since been seen as a mermaid.
Cast & crew
More about Kujira
Noburō Ōfuji remade his 1927 silhouette film with colored cellophane for Chiyogami Eigasha. Nishikata Film Review dates a Japanese premiere to December 1952 and a 1953 Cannes screening as La Baleine. Wikidata also lists 1955, the catalog year.
Themes
Technique
Ōfuji cut the figures from colored cellophane and shot them as silhouettes, instead of the black paper he had used in 1927.
Preservation
A print is on Wikimedia Commons under the 1952 dating of the color version.
Notes
- The 1927 Kujira was silent and black and white. This version adds transparent colored cellophane.
- Ōfuji wrote that he was looking for a way to color the silhouette method he had admired in German films such as The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
- The Japanese Animated Film Classics site says Whale played in the short-film section at Cannes.
- Wikidata lists the source as the earlier film The Whale.
Scenes
- The whale's tail rises beside the ship in the storm.
- Inside the belly the survivors forget the woman and try to get out.
- The closing narration says she has been seen as a mermaid.
Influenced by
- Ōfuji's 1927 Kujira
- Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Kujira (1952).webm)
