Cinema Can Do Genre: Shurayuki-hime

Yuki Kashima was born to kill: her only calling is avenge her mother. A band of criminals killed her husband and their son and raped her. Many years later, her daughter Yuki is an accomplished sword fighter and spurred on by her mission to kill the criminals from back then. SHURAYUKI-HIME tells a moving story of tragic revenge in perfectly (color) composed CinemaScope images. The multi-layered performance by Meiko Kaji, who also sings the title song, the indulgently spurting blood, the scenes in the snow by night – much of this extraordinary representative of the chanbara (swordfighting) gerne seems to have been designed to make it a cult film. Yet it was to be another 30 years until SHURAYUKI-HIME became internationally renowned after Quentin Tarantino quoted from it with gusto in Kill Bill (2003). The shimmering 35mm print created for a subsequent revival by distributor Rapid Eye Movies hasn’t actually been loaned out since 2015 and can now be seen for one final time in Berlin. (gv)