Hiroshi Teshigahara
The Face of Another

Does our face make us who we are? And if the same person had a different face, would they still be themselves or completely different?

These are just a couple of the questions that Hiroshi Teshigahara poses to himself and us viewers in this gem unfortunately fallen into oblivion, The Face of Another. The plot is quite simple: following a workplace accident, Okuyama finds himself with a completely burned face. This forces him to wear bandages, making his interpersonal relationships very complex and different from what they once were. For this reason, to return to living a "normal" life, he asks a psychiatrist, Hari, to construct a realistic mask that would give him normal features again. Parallel to this narrative line is that of Irie, a beautiful girl with half her face disfigured by the atomic bomb (deduced from some flashbacks).

With this film, with its hallucinated and at times quite distressing atmosphere, worthy of the best David Lynch, Teshigahara analyzes the nature of identity and how it reflects on society, giving us one of the most beautiful films about diversity (I can only compare it to "The Elephant Man" by the aforementioned Lynch). In this careful analysis of how appearance can influence and modify an individual's psyche, one of the most emblematic quotes is, without a doubt, the following:

Have you gotten used to the mask, or has the mask gotten used to you?

As if the mask Okuyama wears to regain the freedom the accident robbed him of could somehow take over his personality. After all, the theme of identity is one of the fundamental topics of twentieth-century philosophical debate, and Pirandello had already extensively discussed it. Now, I do not want to claim in any way that Teshigahara knew Luigi Pirandello, but in this film, possible points of contact between the two can be noticed.

"Beware of playing with masks!" the director seems to tell us. Indeed, in both narrative strands, the two protagonists try to deny their masks: Okuyama when, after courting his wife while hiding behind a false identity and taking her to bed, reveals his true identity to her, of which, however, she was perfectly aware; Irie, on the other hand, when she makes love with her brother, the only person in the world who tells her she is beautiful despite her partially disfigured face. Both try to remove their mask but in doing so unleash a force greater than all: death (homicide or suicide, it doesn't matter). Both episodes culminate, in fact, in a death. Once you enter the mask game, there is only one way out.

Apart from the psycho-philosophical issues, Teshigahara's directorial quality is to be praised, masterful in the use of long takes, moving the camera in the most disparate ways, a true experimenter, supported by an exceptional cinematography, with a black and white that leaves very little room for nuances, and a soundtrack that alternates between minimal music and sweeping waltzes. The use of the soundtrack is also brilliant, with ambient sounds rarely audible, as if to further highlight the solitude of the protagonists who, even when in the midst of a crowd, are still isolated.

I won't go any further, I leave any further analysis to you as an invitation to retrieve this masterpiece in any way possible. In fact, this Masterpiece. With a capital 'M'. One of the most beautiful surrealist films I've ever seen, a film capable of shocking, making one reflect, and touching like very few others.