Set primarily within the confines of two Japanese field hospitals during the second Sino-Japanese War, Masumura Yasuzô’s Red Angel ruthlessly interrogates the inextricable bond between sex and death in the most brutal and harrowing of environments. These hospitals are little more than hastily constructed slaughterhouses filled with injured men packed together like sardines, and desperate, overwhelmed medical staffs who are reduced to butchers.
Throughout, Masumura serves up seemingly countless images of blood-soaked nurses and severed limbs, utilizing a heightened sound design that leaves nothing to the imagination, be it the screams of suffering men or saws cutting through bones. Cinematographer Kobayashi Setsuo’s masterful widescreen compositions further intensify the claustrophobia of this hellscape, highlighting the dehumanization of the wounded soldiers in the process. While Red Angel is a horrific vision of wartime violence and its lasting effects, it’s equally concerned with how masculinity is warped to tortured extremes by this environment.
The prospect of death is ever-present here but so, too, is the unquenchable desire for sexual pleasure, or, more simply in most cases, sexual release. Early on, we see one of the nurses, Sakura Nishi (Wakao Ayako) raped by several soldiers, only to come face to face with the man who instigated the attack, Private Sakamoto (Senba Jôtarô), several days later when he’s wounded and lying in front of her on an operating table. When Nishi asks her superior, Dr. Okabe (Ashida Shinsuke), to make an exception and give the private a potentially life-saving blood transfusion—typically reserved only for officers—it’s not out of compassion or forgiveness, but rather to ensure that the man doesn’t think she let him die as revenge.
Despite receiving this special treatment, Sakamoto dies soon after, but his demise marks a strange, definitive turn for Nishi, who, in a radical act of compassion that challenges typical notions of feminine agency, commits herself to finding her own ways of helping the injured men around her. With the head nurse Iwashima (Akagi Ranko) reminding Nishi that the nurses should have no heart and Okabe saying that soldiers aren’t human beings, but rather “objects…dog tags,” Nish rebels through the only means she can: her sexuality.
Granting the request of Private Orihara (Kawazu Yûsuke), a young man who’s lost both arms and is all too aware that the army won’t let him go home since his wounds would demoralize the Japanese population, Nishi gives him a hand job and later takes him to a hotel for a night of passion. This is instantly understood as Nishi grasping for some semblance of control over more than just her own life. As a result of her powerlessness, both when it comes to helping the men under her care or preventing them from treating her like a “comfort women” (mostly Korean women who were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese army), Nishi sees this as a potentially self-affirming way to aid a man who’s life is otherwise hopeless.
When this night’s events unintentionally lead to the man’s suicide, Nishi sets her sights on Okabe, who’s addicted to the morphine that’s left him impotent and is slowly killing him. Okabe’s nihilism, a symptom of being thrust into a situation where his medical training is all but useless, is understandable and in keeping with Masumura’s anti-war sentiments. But with her growing desire for Okabe, Nishi sees helping him kick his habit so that they can copulate as the only logical reaction against the churning death machine of war.
In one remarkable, lengthy sequence, Masumura cross-cuts between a nearby battle and Nishi seducing Okabe after his withdrawal symptoms reside. It’s a perfect distillation of the yin and yang of a seemingly hopeless, interminable situation—the only pure act of love in a place tainted by death, decay, aggression, and eventually even cholera. Of course, this doesn’t result in any lasting change, but it briefly restores Nishi’s hope in humanity, as well as her sense of self-worth. Some may see this as objectifying in nature, but at its core, Nishi’s rebellion is being waged against the treatment of both the nurses and soldiers as objects. It’s her own small way of injecting humanity back into a world seemingly intent on snuffing it out.
Image/Sound
Arrow Video’s 1080p transfer does wonders when it comes to unearthing the myriad background details and textures of the blood-stained walls and corpse-ridden floors of the hospitals in Red Angel that were lost in prior SD transfers. Kobayashi Setsuo’s stark, shadowy black-and-white cinematography is also boosted here by a strong contrast ratio that shows subtle gradations of gray and blacks, while the grain distribution is perfectly even. There are occasional marks of damage at the edges of the frame but rarely ever for long enough to detract from the viewing experience. On the audio front, the uncompressed mono soundtrack is quite robust, with a well-balanced mix that offers nice separation between the many chaotic sounds of the field hospital and clean dialogue throughout.
Extras
A new audio commentary by Japanese cinema scholar David Desser is the perfect primer for those just diving into the work of Masumura Yasuzô, especially the 20 films he made with his muse, Wakao Ayako. Desser also delves into the similarities between Wakao’s character in Red Angel and the classic femme fatale, as well as the tragic history behind comfort women that were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army. In his visual essay Not All Angels Have Wings, Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses the similarities between Masumura and Samuel Fuller, and how Red Angel forces the viewer to confront the realities of wartime hospitals and approaches the borderline exploitative material with no moral judgments of the characters.
Critic Tony Rayns rounds out the disc extras with a wonderful video introduction that places Red Angel in the context of Japanese anti-war films from the era, suggesting that Masumura’s film marked a distinct shift toward the more graphic and nihilistic. The package also comes with a bound booklet that includes a fantastic essay by cinema scholar Irene González-López, who discusses the film’s complicated morality and themes of agency and desire.
Overall
Arrow has outfitted Masumura Yasuzô’s harrowing wartime tale of death and desire with a beautiful transfer and a top-notch slate of extras.
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