“A Page Of Madness” is a silent Japanese film from 1926 that was thought to be lost for many years until a copy of it was found in the 1970s. I will not pretend to have understood what was going on but what it is clear is that this is a surreal experience with striking visuals. This is a very disturbing film, especially when you consider that it came out in 1920s.

Set in an insane asylum, a man takes a job as a caretaker as hopes to free his imprisoned wife from the institution. He also has to deal with the very frightening encounters with the other inmates, who are often very violent.

You really get the sense that the inmates in this picture are truly mad. You can see the insanity in their eyes and is very disturbing. They laugh like maniacs as the doctors and other asylum staff seek to restore order. The caretaker is also slowly but surely losing his mind as he begins to have aggressive and weird dreams. The performances in this movie are very good. There are no dialog intertitles so it is often very difficult to understand what is going on so that is why the physical performances of the actors and actresses matter even more.

Silent films can often be very inaccessible to modern audiences and “A Page Of Madness” is most certainly at the extreme end but it’s worth the effort. This is easily one of the best movies set in an insane asylum. In 1926, Japanese filmmakers were able to create something far more frightening and far more engaging than American movies such as “Gothika” over seven decades later. It’s also rather interesting to see what Japanese filmmakers were doing while Europeans were making “Metropolis” and “Battleship Potemkin” and Americans were making “The General” and “The Gold Rush”.