I put off watching this after taking a gander at the trailer, which made this look like it was going to be a very difficult film to absorb, incoherent and arty. Thank goodness I’d already learned to trust Teshigahara and to know that the worst thing about his films are the trailers.

This is another Teshigahara/Kobo Abe GEM. The cinematography is first rate, the design very surreal and cool (especially the clinic where our hero gets his new face, all metal and glass and Langdon lines and strange angles).

The story is also very cool and pleasantly disturbing. A man has lost his face in an industrial accident. He is seeing a combination psychiatrist/prophylactics maker who has developed a way of manufacturing an artificial face for him on the condition that he keep the doctor apprised of his plans and experiences, which are every bit as creepy as the clinic’s setting suggests they will be.

This narrative parallels another of a young woman whose radiation burns give her a dual appearance—she’s a “knock-out” on one side and a monster on another, a victim of the A-bomb that hit Nagasaki.

This is some gorgeous black and white filmmaking and a magnificently unsettling story. Great stuff!