The Mad Fox

Uchida’s strangest and most stylized film is a visual feast, adapted by Yoshikata Yoda from a traditional puppet play. Dispensing with naturalism, Uchida uses expressionist sets and color schemes to convey the shifting states of mind of a protagonist driven mad by grief after his lover is killed. Some scenes are shot against theatrical backdrops inspired by kabuki theater and traditional dance; others unfold on elaborately colored sets reminiscent of traditional screen paintings. The Mad Fox’s audacious artifice makes Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964) pale in comparison.