The Serpent

If you don't toe the line, they will crush you

The Serpent aka Orochi is a morality tale that follows a samurai whose sense of honor and lack of forethought land him in deeper and deeper quagmires. A silent movie with Kabuki style makeup and a benshi performance, a narrator who describes the action throughout, The Serpent is a very early silent movie with excellent fight choreography and cinematography. The moviegoer is reminded repeatedly that "not all who are respected are worthy of the name" and "not all who wear the name villain are evil men".

Kuritomi Heizaburo was a samurai from a poor background. At a birthday party for his master an aristocrat's son taunts him and throws sake in Kuritomi's face which causes a fight to erupt. Everyone takes the wealthy samurai's side and Kuritomi is suspended for a month. When he stands up for the honor of the master's daughter against three gossiping traveling samurai he is kicked out of not only his master's house but also the town and labeled a bully. A masterless Ronin, in threadbare clothes, Kuritomi rails inside at the injustices visited upon him. The master's daughter he loved, Namie, easily believed evil of him as well as the rest of the samurai and townspeople. After more injustices caused by his place in society and his hot headedness Kuritomi spends time in jail and runs afoul of the law. He falls for another woman, Ochio, who will have nothing to with him because of his bad reputation as an outlaw. All l he wants is for someone to see into his heart and know that he is a good man. Finally, thinking he has found a noble and wise master he learns that the nobility is all a façade and the man is vile to his core.

Time after time in the movie, those who are revered for their place in society turn out to be filled with filth. Kuritomi who starts out with a pure heart is never seen for who he really is and suffers mightily for it, slowly circling down a lawless path. The Serpent is critical of societal structure with wealthy people and those of a higher social stature being able to bend justice to meet their needs while people like Kuritomi cannot find justice for justice has deaf ears where he is concerned. It is also a critique on judging a book by its cover, never looking to see what is behind the mask people wear. Kuritomi was called a blood thirsty devil though he had never killed anyone. He was a desolate, desperate man who only wanted justice and for someone to see that he was a good man.

For a 1925 film, the cinematography was exceptional, with wide pan shots and close-ups as were needed. The filming of the fight sequences were quite creative. If I have one qualm it's that the fight scenes and running scenes were sped up ala Keystone Cops. The fight choreography was so unprecedented for an early film that I wish they had run it at normal speed so that I could have fully enjoyed the intricate moves and falls.

The version I watched had music in the background. I had to mute it for most of the movie because the narration took place in Japanese and Russian overlapping, very distracting. The acting was primitive and not as natural as in some other later silent films.

Kuritomi, as honorable as he saw himself, was flawed. He did not think situations through or weigh consequences. Even though the world showed him over and over it was not a fair place he refused to believe it and ran head long into situations without thinking them through. Where Namie and Ochio were concerned, Kuritomi could be obsessive and overly aggressive, there was a reason they feared him. Yet for all his flaws he was a pitiful character, only wanting to do the honorable thing and always punished for it, no one to trust, no one to care for him. Serpent can be a challenging movie to watch at times when the lead behaves unsympathetically and as unhappiness upon unhappiness is dumped upon him.

If you are open to exploring old movies, and as an example of an early samurai film where the samurai are not shown in a favorable light and a tale of a man, despite being labeled an outlaw, only wanting to be seen and understood, Serpent is worth trying out.






7/20/22

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