Japan
1966
124 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
Japanese
395
A staggering work of existential science fiction, The Face of Another dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Okuyama (Yojimbo‘s Tatsuya Nakadai), after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist’s radical new experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the strange world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations. With unforgettable imagery, Teshigahara’s film explores both the limits and freedom in acquiring a new persona, and questions the notion of individuality itself.
| Mr. Okuyama | Tatsuya Nakadai |
| Mrs. Okuyama | Machiko Kyo |
| Psychiatrist | Mikijiro Hira |
| Nurse Kyoko | Kishida |
| Girl with scar | Miki Irie |
| The boss | Eiji Okada |
| Apartment superintendent | Minoru Chiaki |
| Director | Hiroshi Teshigahara |
| Screenplay | Kôbô Abe |
| Music | Toru Takemitsu |
| Cinematography | Hiroshi Segawa |
| Editing | Yoshi Sughihara |
| Art direction | Masao Yamazaki |
| Lighting | Mitsuo Kume |
| Sound | Junosuke Okuyama |
| Titles | Kiyoshi Awazu |
| Set decoration | Kenichiro Yamamoto |
| Still photography | Yasuhiro Yoshioka |
After making his international reputation in the sixties with a series of eerie existential parables written by Kobo Abe and scored by Toru Takemitsu, and then losing it with the raw, uncharacteristic Summer Soldiers (1972), the increasingly reclusive Hiroshi Teshigahara all but abandoned . . .
The names Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe, and Toru Takemitsu loom large among Japanese intellectuals of the late twentieth century. Each in his own right was an artist of peculiar genius, each resisting easy classification in conventional categories: Teshigahara as filmmaker, designer, flower . . .
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