Crossroads

Rikiya falls for a courtesan and is blinded by ash in a fight at the brothel. Believing the blindness permanent and the other man dead, he goes home to his sister Okiku. Desperate to protect a brother who thinks himself a murderer, Okiku is ready to sacrifice herself and go into sex work to pay for his treatment. Teinosuke Kinugasa’s film uses an expressionist visual language Japanese cinema had not touched until then; shadow, distortion and abrupt cutting come ahead of the narrative. It became the first Japanese silent film to be known in the West, and was received very warmly when it screened in Europe in 1928. Today it counts among the boldest and most inventive works of the Japanese silent era.