The Face of Another (1966)

Highly Recommended

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 他人の顔

Director: Teshigahara Hiroshi

Writers: Abe Kōbō

Cinematographer: Segawa Hiroshi

Composer: Takemitsu Tōru

Cast: Nakadai Tatsuya, Hira Mikijirō, Kishida Kyōko, Irie Miki, Ichihara Etsuko, Kyō Machiko

With its evocative photography, unsettling score, inventive production design, and top-notch performances, Teshigahara’s distinctive, dreamlike film – an enigmatic, sort-of adaptation of Abe’s (seemingly) unfilmmable novel, depicting a horribly disfigured man’s attempts to rejoin society with the aid of a very life-like mask, provided by a rather mischievous doctor – is an excellent follow-up to his previous work, the masterpiece Woman of the Dunes (1964). Iain.Stott