EFP 51: Kobayashi's Kwaidan at 60 with Sam Warnock

On the 60th anniversary of its release, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Film Studies PhD student Sam Warnock to discuss Japanese writer-director Kobayashi Masaki's extraordinary ghost story anthology Kwaidan (1964).Shot entirely on studio sets in sumptuous widescreen and lavish, saturated colour, Kwaidan adapts ghost stories by author Lafcadio Hearn and is undoubtedly one of the most visually and aurally striking films of the 1960s. Kobayashi's biographer Steven Prince has described it as the director's 'most overtly and extravagantly stylized film'. Sam and Pasquale discuss the work of Kobayashi and Hearn more broadly as well as the remarkable contribution of composer Takemitsu Toru. They then move onto a close analysis of the four episodes themselves, discussing elements such as narrative structure, adaptation strategies, use of colour, set design as well as the film's textured soundscape.