Shiro Toyoda's Portrait Of Hell (1969) starring Tatusya Nakadai feels something like an overlooked classic. I am familiar with Toyoda by reputation only; his films are hard to come by in the west. In this film, an adaptation of a classic story by Ryuosuke Akutagawa ("Rashomon"), he focuses on the theme of hell on earth. Nakadai plays a Korean master artist, Yoshihide, under the patron-ship of selfish and cruel daimyo, Hosokawa (Kinosuke Nakamura). Yoshihide also has his weakness as he is stubborn and arrogant-he refuses to let his daughter marry the man of her choice which leads to her being forced to become a concubine of Hosokawa and later is responsible for her death due to his pride. Toyoda uses cinematic techniques to maximize the effects of hell on earth with split screens, superimpositions, color filters, and distorted voices from the fiery depths that haunt the wicked still on earth.
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