A Tale of Smallpox (1975)

Stills, screencaps & shots from A Tale of Smallpox

6 of 6 frames — the full set is searchable by lighting, lens, shot size, color and mood with a free account.

What is A Tale of Smallpox about?

The smallpox virus has created its own unique atmosphere in Terayama’s film where the skin of a bandaged adolescent and the surface of the filmic image are subjected to a bizarre ‘disturbance’ as snails cross the screen and nails are hammered into the skull of the ailing patient. Illness in this film is as much a psychic entity as a physical one and manifests itself in an array of theatrical tableaux from grotesque women rigorously brushing their teeth to a snooker game where the players in white face makeup behave like automata. A Tale of Smallpox uses a medical theme to chart the traumatic dream life of Terayama’s times, evincing deep-rooted concerns in the Japanese national psyche that hark back to the upheaval of Meiji modernisation and the devastation of World War Two.

Who stars in A Tale of Smallpox?

• Keiko Niitaka
• Yoko Ran
• Takeshi Wakamatsu

Who made A Tale of Smallpox?

• Shūji TerayamaDirector
• Tatsuo SuzukiCinematography
• Eiko KujoProducer

What is the color palette of A Tale of Smallpox?

The dominant colors across the sampled frames of A Tale of Smallpox (1975) are #030734, #99c8f5, #060606, #f9fafc, #003399, #3366cc — measured from the per-frame color data FrameThrower extracts for every film.

• #030734
• #99c8f5
• #060606
• #f9fafc
• #003399
• #3366cc

Techniques in this film

• Vintage Lens Look
• Low-Key Lighting
• Night Scenes
• Deep Focus

More films by Shūji Terayama

• An Attempt to Describe the Measure of a Man (1977)
• Butterfly (1974)
• Emperor Tomato Ketchup
• Labyrinth Tale (1975)
• Laura (1974)
• Les Chants de Maldoror (1977)
• Pastoral To Die In The Country (1974)
• The Cage (1964)
• The Eraser (1977)
• The Reading Machine (1977)
• The War of Jan-Ken-Pon (1971)
• The Woman with Two Heads (1977)