Jujiro on DVD

[Aaron Gerow]

As some of you may know, cut rate DVDs (usually priced at about 1000  
yen, instead of the usual 4000-5000 yen) have been appearing in Japan  
for the last few years, most of which try to take advantage of the  
fact that films made before 1954 are technically public domain. Some  
have been the subject of court cases, as especially producers of  
Kurosawa's films have successfully argued in court that at least his  
films are still protected by copyright.

Still, many other films are coming out on these labels, though most  
are unknown, unacclaimed works that may interest only diehard fans or  
those who like the genre (there are a lot of jidaigeki). But perhaps  
to avoid the problems experienced with the court cases, some companies  
have recently been putting out really old films, including silent  
works in a market where the majors have mostly ignored silent films  
except by famous directors like Ozu.

I was thus extremely surprised to see that Kinugasa Teinosuke's Jujiro  
(Crossroads, 1928) has recently been put out on DVD by one of these  
cut-rate labels, Disk Plan, in their Nihon Meisaku Gekijo series. I  
bought a copy to check it out and, thankfully, the visuals are pretty  
good for the price (1000 yen). It is 74 minutes in length, which means  
they probably did at silent speed. There is no music, no menu, no  
chapters, and of course no subtitles, but given that this has never  
even come out on VHS (unlike Kinugasa's Page of Madness, which came  
out on VHS in the USA about 20 years ago), it was amazing to see this.  
I wonder where they got the print for this.

I also bought the DVD of Onoe Matsunosuke's Yaji Kita (1922) from the  
same company. That is much the same as Jujiro (though with few  
intertitles--as was the style at Nikkatsu in those years--the story is  
largely incomprehensible). Given that little of any Mattchan's films  
exist, let alone have come out on DVD, this was also a find.

Disk Plan has especially been putting out DVDs of silent films, some  
of which have also come out on regular labels for much more. But be  
careful: sometimes the prints they are using are quite different and  
the running time can be half of what exists elsewhere.

Anyone else have experience with these? Some people on the net report  
some cases of bad DVD pressing, but my copies worked fine.

Here's one list of such films:

http://www.digiw-media.jp/genre.php?genre_id=45

I bought mine through Amazon.jp.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com