In medieval Japan, a nameless older woman (Nobuko Otawa) and her daugher-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) live in a shack set in a vast marsh. Unable raise their own crops because of the constant chaos around them, they kill passing samurai and strip them of clothing and armor, which they sell for food. Hachi (Kei Sato), one of their neighbors, has deserted the army into which he and the older woman's son were conscripted. He has returned home alone, claiming that the son was beaten to death by a gang of peasant farmers. Hachi and the daughter-in-law become lovers, despite the older woman's objections. When she finds a passing samurai wearing a grotesque mask, the older woman steals it and puts it on to frighten away the daughter-in-law from visiting Hachi.

Onibaba is unquestionably one of the great Japanese films of the 1960s. It is usually categorized as a horror film because of its disturbing imagery, but the spare, parable-like story also serves as a powerful commentary about the effects of war on ordinary people--how, in the struggle for survival, humans are reduced to a bestial existence. Some of the film's visceral impact is inevitably lost at home on the small screen, but thanks to the Criterion Collection's meticulous transfer it remains riveting. Above all, the film is a vivid sensual experience, from Kiyomi Kuroda¿s expressive black-and-white 'scope compositions and the tall susuki grass which dwarfs the characters, to the courageous, fever-pitch performances by the three leads and the brilliant musical score by Hikaru Hayashi, a combination of drumming and avant-garde jazz.

The grotesque horned mask which the samurai wears comes from the Noh theater tradition. Significantly, it is a Hannya mask, which represents not a demon per se, but the spirit of a jealous or scorned woman. When painted white, the mask is usually associated with the play Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), one of the best-known works in the Noh repertoire. On an obvious level, the mask reflects the older woman's thwarted sexual desire and her desperate fear of being abandoned. But the mask also has broader social implications: in Shindo's view Japanese feudal society, with its rigid class distinctions and codes of honor, was inherently corrupt; the handsome face the samurai boasts of turns out to be covered in oozing sores. In addition, as critic David Desser points out, the disease from which the samurai and the older woman suffer can be understood partly as an allusion to the atomic bomb. In Japan, victims of radiation poisoning were often treated as outcasts, a problem portrayed movingly in Shohei Imamura's masterpiece Black Rain (1989). The older woman's plea at the end of the film--"I'm a human being!--is deeply resonant in this regard.

Onibaba is especially noteworthy for its treatment of sexuality, a recurring theme in the director's work. As Shindo states in the interview included on the DVD, "Sex is the very foundation of human life." The frequent nudity and raw sexual encounters depicted in the film may have been daring enough in Japan, but they were practically unprecedented for mainstream American cinemas at that time. During the early-to-mid 1960s, art films like Onibaba and Ingmar Bergman's The Silence (1963) attracted significant audiences in large part because of their adult content, and their distributors cannily exploited this fact. The promotional materials for Onibaba, for example, promised "shock after shock after sensual shock." Even by today's standards, the film would certainly merit an "R" rating.

The director Kaneto Shindo (b. 1912), is also a leading screenwriter in Japan. Born in Hiroshima to a family of impoverished farmers, he worked as an assistant to Kenji Mizoguchi in the 1930s and subsequently wrote the scripts for Mizoguchi films such as Woman¿s Victory (1946) and My Love Has Been Burning (1949). Like his mentor, his own films often concern the plight of women in Japanese society. Other important Shindo scripts include the underrated Manji (1964), directed by Yasuzo Masumura, and Fighting Elegy (1966), directed by Seijun Suzuki. In 1950, Shindo founded an independent production company, Kindai Eiga Kyokai (Modern Film Association) and directed his first feature, The Story of a Beloved Wife, in 1951. Besides Onibaba, his best-known film in the West is The Island (1960), a film shot entirely without dialogue. Other features by directed Shindo include a 1975 documentary tribute to Mizoguchi and, most recently, The Owl (2003).

Criterion's anamorphically enhanced transfer beautifully captures the textures and contrasts of the film's black-and-white cinematography, making this by far the best version yet to appear stateside. Some reviewers have complained that the image isn¿t quite as sharp as the Japanese DVD and that there is some aliasing in shots of the susuki grass. Any such purported defects, however, are minor at worst; most viewers will be extremely pleased with the image. The disc also includes a lucid 20-minute interview with Kaneto Shindo, super 8 footage of the film¿s production and an image gallery of sketches and promotional materials for the film. The liner notes include essays by Shindo and film critic Chuck Stephens, as well as a translation of the Buddhist fable which inspired the film. On the whole, an excellent release by Criterion.

by James Steffen