Reception
Critics disagree on the genre of the film. While Onibaba is regarded a "period drama" by David Robinson, or "stage drama" by Japanese film scholar Keiko I. McDonald, Phil Hardy included it in his genre compendium as a horror film, and Chuck Stephens describes it as an erotic-horror classic.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian says "Onibaba is a chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness". He comments on the photography "The action of the movie is interspersed with brilliantly composed, almost abstract compositions of the wasteland itself" and summarizes "Onibaba deserves something more than cult status." Jonathan Rosenbaum describes it as "creepy, interesting, and visually striking".
Keiko I. McDonald says that the film contains elements of the Noh theatre. She notes that the han'nya mask "is used to demonize the sinful emotions of jealousy and its associative emotions" in Noh plays, and that the differing camera angles at which the mask is filmed in Onibaba are similar to the way in which a Noh performer uses the angle of the mask to indicate emotions. Other reviewers also speculate about Noh influences on the film.
Read more about this topic: Onibaba (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)