A Girl at Dojo Temple (1946)

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Musume Dojoji (A Girl at Dojo Temple), a 20 minute puppet movie, made in 1946. It was the first film of Kon Ichikawa. The ancient Kabuki play, where a young maiden at the temple was passing from innocence to frustration to revenge (finally transforming into a serpent-dragon), was retold by Ichikawa in a new perspective: the girl is now a princess that hepls a young bell-maker and eventually transforms herself in the bell, as a symbol of eternal love. Think at the final scene from Tarkovsky's Rublyov!

The movie of Ichikawa had a dramatic destiny. The American military censors considered it too feudal and confiscated the movie. It was 1946! Musume Dojoji was never shown in theatres and it was believed to be lost. Fortunately a surviving copy still exists and it is kept at the Cinémathèque Française.

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(Japanese Cinema)