Dis­cov­er the dreamy delights of this Japan­ese detec­tive noir

Watch­ing Kaizō Hayashi’s To Sleep So as to Dream involves also watch­ing The Eter­nal Mys­tery, a silent melo­dra­mat­ic chan­bara in which the ​‘Black Mask’ strives to res­cue the beau­ti­ful Princess from an armed gang of abduc­tors. Indeed Hayashi’s stylised fea­ture debut from the mid Eight­ies opens with a pri­vate screen­ing of that antique action­er, pro­ject­ed in the liv­ing room of ail­ing old Madame Cher­ry­blos­som (Fujiko Fukami­zo) – although its final reel of rev­e­la­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is missing.

If The Eter­nal Mys­tery is an arte­fact from a bygone age, it also marks a cer­tain chang­ing of the times, as in its cli­mac­tic sequence we see the Black Mask swap­ping his tra­di­tion­al samu­rai sword for a mod­ern, west­ern pis­tol. Con­verse­ly, To Sleep So as to Dream, though set long after The Eter­nal Mys­tery was made, clings to many of the film-within-a-film’s nec­es­sary con­ven­tions. For it too is in black-and-white, with its per­for­mances ham­mi­ly ges­tur­al, and its dia­logue reduced to inter­ti­tles – although oth­er sounds, like a tele­phone ring­ing, singing on the radio, the knock on a door or a mes­sage record­ed on tape, have been post-syn­chro­nised in acknowl­edge­ment that Hayashi’s film occu­pies a dif­fer­ent world from the film that it con­tains and reconstructs.

In fact To Sleep So As To Dream plays out like a remake of The Eter­nal Mys­tery, as Detec­tive Uot­su­ka (Shirō Sano), a nerdish, bespec­ta­cled pri­vate eye ​‘hard-boiled’ only in the sense that he is on a con­stant diet of cooked eggs, and his assis­tant Kobayashi (Koji Otake) are hired by Madame Cherryblossom’s loy­al ser­vant (Yoshio Yoshi­da) to track down her kid­napped daugh­ter Bell­flower (Moe Kamu­ra), and to find a hap­py res­o­lu­tion to an incom­plete story.

The rid­dles left by the kid­nap­pers for Uot­su­ka and Kobayashi, and the pair’s recur­rent encoun­ters with a trio of per­for­ma­tive trick­sters (Morio Aga­ta, Kazu­nari Oza­sa, Aki­ra Ôizu­mi) who fur­nish obscure clues, sug­gest from the out­set that they are being manip­u­lat­ed, direct­ed and stage-man­aged from the shad­ows into a sce­nario over which they have lit­tle con­trol. Yet even as they repeat­ed­ly fail, Madame Cherryblossom’s man keeps pay­ing them ever more to per­se­vere in their inves­ti­ga­tion, until the utter­ly lost Uot­su­ka starts won­der­ing aloud if all that is hap­pen­ing might just be a dream.

Cin­e­ma is of course a medi­um of dreams, and this metacin­e­mat­ic film about the belat­ed, back­ward-look­ing pur­suit of some­thing as elu­sive as lost youth or a bygone medi­um cer­tain­ly comes packed with ele­ments of an oneir­ic nature. Not since Giulio Questi’s sim­i­lar­ly sur­re­al Death Laid An Egg, from 1968, had there been a film so sin­gu­lar­ly obsessed with chick­ens and eggs, while its set­tings – includ­ing an aban­doned amuse­ment park and an old cin­e­ma – cre­ate a car­ni­va­lesque hall of mir­rors in which the fan­tasies of enter­tain­ment are fore­ground­ed while real­i­ty is kept out of the picture.

The title of To Sleep So as to Dream also alludes to a line from Hamlet’s famous solil­o­quy on death, and along­side all its dreamy dis­ori­en­ta­tions, Hayashi’s film also serves as ele­gy and adieu to silent-era cin­e­ma, as mori­bund as the detective’s mys­te­ri­ous employ­er. While the detec­tives both retrace and re-enact tropes ren­dered long since redun­dant, they encounter warm-up acts, musi­cal accom­pa­nists, and even a ben­shi (Shun­sui Mat­su­da) – or live nar­ra­tor – who alone here gets to speak aloud in a voice that we actu­al­ly hear.

All these peo­ple demon­strate how oth­er­wise mute movies were once staged and brought to life for a pay­ing audi­ence. It is a melan­cholic love let­ter to the pass­ing of time, the fad­ing of beau­ty, and the death of cin­e­ma itself – even as its own man­nered pre­sen­ta­tion sug­gests that there is noth­ing in this medi­um that can­not be momen­tar­i­ly res­ur­rect­ed, even as affec­tion­ate pastiche.

To Sleep So as to Dream is released on Blu-ray on 21 March via Arrow Video.

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