Belladonna of Sadness and malignant female agency
CW: Sexual Assault, Nudity, Murder
Women using their sexuality as a means of empowerment is nothing new. Beautiful Delilah seduces Samson’s secrets away from him for a trove of silver. Sexual Salome dances for her desires and earns that which she wishes for. These women are reduced to their sex by a patriarchal society and, in theory, embrace it to elevate themselves in their respective societies. This is false. Narratives and characters created by men, for men, can be anything. Female characters using their sexuality as an advantage often serve more to titillate the audience than to furnish these women with agency. They are reflecting the values of their creators back at them, providing a thrill along the way.
No animated film more recently has treaded this empowerment and exploitation divide more than Mushi Production’s 1973 Belladonna of Sadness, a film conceived of by Osamu Tezuka and directed by Eiichi Yamamoto. The film’s protagonist, Jeanne, is a woman subject to the world around her who, for some, reclaims her agency through magic and devilish revenge. Despite this surface reading of vested sexual vengeance, the film is truly a dangerous mix of beauty and debasement. It’s feminism is faux and it’s pain is resonant. By tracing the history of Osamu Tezuka, Mushi Productions, the 1970s social climate of Japan, and cinematic feminine sexual exploitation vs. empowerment, we can investigate the true implications of Belladonna of Sadness. The film’s production follows a noted pattern of female sexual exploitation by it’s creators and an attempt to alter it’s reading.
Belladonna of Sadness centers around the trial of it’s protagonist, Jeanne. Jeanne is beautiful and made to suffer. Following a rape by a feudal lord on her wedding night, her once loving husband, Jean, grows distant. The devil, in the form on an impish phallus who grows larger and larger, offers her greatness in exchange for her body. With her ill-gotten luxury and happiness, Jeanne become the focus of both the peasants respect and fear. The Lord rapes her again causing her to flee to the woods where the, now life-size and fully erect, phallic devil demands her soul and for her to seek out sexual revenge. Jeanne does so and helps the Black Plague ridden town through her mystic medicinal flowers and psychedelic orgies. Jeanne is burned at the stake as a witch inspiring the townsfolk to rise up against the aristocracy.
A country changing
Post-occupation Japan during the late 1960s and early 1970s was in the full throes of an economic revival. Japanese manufacturing was swift, prolific, and effective resulting in a period of quick change. Along with the fiscal increases, women’s rights asserted themselves more and more into the national narrative. After decades of fighting, women in Japan achieved the right to vote in 1946. They were now fighting again. One could “ask a Japanese man what he thinks about the opposite sex and, nine changes out of ten, he’ll say: “After the war, two things in Japan became stronger, women and stockings”(Paul). It was a climate rich for change and evolution. However, as with every social movement, there was push back from the status quo and those with the heftiness slice of the social sphere; heterosexual men.
The women’s liberation movement in Japan following global trends in feminism. While movements occurred on a similar timeline, they didn’t focus on the same issues as Western feminism. The Japanese women’s liberation movement, ribu, viewed the current sexual climate in Japan as having a strong imbalance of power. They fought against an ideological gender structure that separated women into virtuous or wanton. This is in contrast to some contemporary western feminism tenants which encouraged ‘free love’. Setsu Shigematsu strikes a contrast in her 2012 book Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan,
“Ribu’s notion of the liberation of sex was not the same as sexual liberation, if the latter were taken to imply the liberalization of sex relation between men and women. To the contrary, the contemporary trend of “free sex” was a problematic practice that ribu women would continue to deplore…they would emphasize instead an alternative relationality… between men and women.” (Shigematsu)
To be an enlightened and empowered woman in Japan at the time would not necessarily conjure up the idea of women exercising extreme free love and encouraging it among others. An ideology suggestion liberation through sexual exploration would have been one either wholly misinterpreting the message radical Japanese feminism or simply obtuse to it all together. Whichever the reasoning, the result stands on it’s own. This is the political climate in which male artists were existing at the time. The ever-present dissatisfaction of the status quo was bubbling up underneath them.
The Walt Disney of Japan
Societal push back can appear all over the world in which in exists, from policy to art. Osamu Tezuka, the ‘Walt Disney of Japan’, used his vantage as an artist and filmmaker to push his own ideals and thoughts about this rapidly changing world. Economic turmoil and war are often the backdrop for his dramatic works. His output through his production company, Mushi Productions, runs the gamut from family fare, like Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, to hardcore adult entertainment, like the Animerama trilogy. His production company’s final film, Belladonna of Sadness, depicts Jeanne being raped repeatedly and, according to Tezuka, taking control of that sexuality. It is “a rape fantasy, in which the initial attack is followed by less violent anime-style intrusions of flowering tendrils and devilish imps”(Hale).
Amongst the most pivotal, and controversial, scenes is the initial rape of the Jeanne. This scene sets into motion the resulting chaos of Jeanne’s turmoil and lays the foundation for the rest of the film. It sets not only the narrative of the film but also the tone, the contrast of the violent with the beautiful, and the depiction of Jeanne’s body. It’s preceding scene is the opening; a lush look at the couple, Jeanne and Jean, through long tracking shots over still paintings. Jeanne and Jean are not only in love with each other, but are loved by the villagers. Jeanne in particular. It’s this rich imagery and jovial atmosphere that provides the audience with a startling jolt with what follows.
Jeanne and Jean visit the Lord and Lady to pay a traditional “marriage tax” for the wedding. Jean offers the money he raised by selling their only cow and begs for the Lord to “entrust” him with Jeanne. The Lord, struck by Jeanne’s beauty, insists that Jean pay the equivalent of ten cows. Jean is adamant that he cannot as they are poor. Jeanne pleads to the Lady’s mercy asking for help. The villagers laud her with praise, asserting that there is nothing “lustful” about her. The Lady, in her mercy, has Jean thrown out by the court and Jeanne is taken by the Lord. Jean, along on the outside of the castle, hears Jeanne’s screams of anguish.
Jeanne’s scream momentarily precedes her, now nude, body being, literally, torn apart by her rapist. Blood flows from Jeanne’s genitals and turns into red bats which overtake the frame. She writhes in distress while the Skull-headed King thrusts into her and red bats flutter. Her arms and legs are tense, fully strained, trying to take Jeanne away from her pain. Jeanne’s body, in white monotone, is repeatedly forced apart by the red silhouette of the King’s penis rhythmically entering her. Half of her body is her vaginal canal forced to accept this unwelcome visitor. After the third shot of the silhouetted penis, it’s red coloring consumes the frame hiding Jeanne and revealing only the rhythmic motions of her attacker. Her upturned face, in cutaways, contorts and shudders. A crow caws silently at her side and the Queen’s Page joyfully dances on her arm at her misery. After the heinous act is committed, Jeanne’s white body is featured in slow pan with black, demonic creatures clinging to her.
These scenes are not out of place, it is one of but several non-consensual sex scenes Jeanne endures throughout the film. Jeanne’s transformation into a witch is started on her wedding night by the Lord’s violent actions. Her supposed empowerment builds over the course of the film, leading her to encourage sexual encounters amongst the townsfolk by hosting orgies and providing lustful potions. Empowerment through sexuality can be seen as a Feminist but this was certainly not the case in the Feminist climate of 1970s Japan. Belladonna attempts to utilizes several empowerment ideas and fantasies that would have been percolating at the time but never to their full realization. It borrows bits and bobs from several different political sources, delivering something meant to shock and excite. There is little here to be seen as empowerment in which a conventionally beauty woman repeatedly raped and violated framed in such a way that reinforces a pre-existing heterosexual, patriarchal sexual paradigm.
A woman taking control of her sexuality can be empowering but Tezuka’s iteration of it is not. Jeanne serves the audience her body to be consumed in a way that fulfills preexisting notions of female sexuality as defined by men. “Those who have faced sexual violence are so commonly sentimentalized or stigmatized, cast as uniquely heroic or uniquely broken. Everything can be projected upon them, it seems — everything but the powers and vulnerabilities of ordinary personhood”(Sehgal).
Tezuka’s interest in women and women’s sexuality as a metaphor didn’t start with Belladonna. His seminole 1970 manga series, The Book of Human Insects, is a mix of violence, sex, and exploitation. In The Book of Human Insects, the protagonist, Toshiko Tomura, is a beautiful, powerful women who achieves great success throughout the series. She succeeds in the world business by absorbing the power of men that she sleeps with. She “lacks a core self or sense of responsibility while manipulating others for narcissistic gain in vampiric dependence”(Knighton 10). Toshiko creates her gains using her body and sexuality. Her very nature “appears as a reactionary argument against female independence”(Kingston). Toshiko, in a way, refuses to be objectified by society and, so, she objectifies herself. Using this, Tezuka is attempting to provide her with agency and her own dynamic series of choices. How dynamic can her choices truly be when she her end objectification is still fulfilling the wishes of the patriarchal society in which she lives? Tezuka attempts to use the percolating Feminist climate of Japan’s own vocabulary against them in Toshiko’s faux empowerment.
The series, at initial consumption, may appear to be a woman using her sexual power to her advantage over men but, like Belladonna, it has layers. The comic itself is considered ‘Seinen’ manga, manga created for young men and boys. The intended audience is young, heterosexual men which is underscored by the loaded depictions of the protagonist in highly sexualized situations. Her lithe body waits in the frame to be consumed by the male gaze of it’s presumed viewer. Toshiko is not just sexy and powerful, her sex is her power.
Using war and economic turmoil as a backdrop is not a unique concept unto Belladonna. It is a device utilized by Tezuka in several films and manga series. In his 1972 series Ayako, the protagonist, for which the series is named, is subject to a variety of horrors served to further the stories of the male characters. Ayako, the youngest child of a middle class Japanese family, is born during the aftermath of World War Two. Ayako discovers that her brother is a double agent for the United States and a hit man. She further discovers that her Sister-in-Law is actually her mother, who is forced to have sex with her father, the family patriarch. In order to hide these secrets, her family locks her in the basement where she remains for two decades while she grows into a beautiful and attractive woman. There, the series follows Ayako’s life navigating her release. She seeks the company of men who exploit her naivety and beauty. Ayako’s agency is never fully formed. She is an allegory, a chess piece, and beautiful woman meant to be consumed by a male reader. The themes employed by Tezuka in these manga are themes he revisits again and again across mediums throughout his career.
Mushi Productions
During the 1950s, Tezuka was employed by Toei Animation, the name in Japanese animation production at that time. When his contract expired in 1961, he founded the rival Mushi Productions, a powerhouse of animation production employing a strong team of men lead by Tezuka. It was a quickly created team with “some dissenters [arguing] that Tezuka could never have created his animation company…so swiftly were it not for the Toei studio labor pool available to poach from”(Clements 2013).
Amongst them was frequent collaborator and co-founder Eiichi Yamamoto, director of 5 films for Mushi including Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, and the Animerama Trilogy(A Thousand and One Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladonna of Sadness). In addition to directing, Yamamoto often assisted with the production, supervising, and writing of the productions. Starting with Astro Boy, their relationship blossomed within the company until Tezuka’s 1968 departure where he left to form, yet another, production company, Tezuka Productions.
Following this departure, Yamamoto helmed the subsequent films production with ideas conceived by Tezuka. Tezuka was criticized as having “proposed an unrealistically suppressed production budget… in an attempt to outbid his competitors” (Morisawa) which contributed to the studio’s low profitability. Yamamoto continued to run the fledgling studio until it’s folding in 1973 following the release, and commercial failure, of Belladonna.
Animation for Adults
Belladonna is the final film of Mushi Productions Animerama trilogy, a series of erotically charged films intended for an older audience. These films fall into the purview of ‘Pink Films’, softcore Japanese feature films depicting, or including, nudity and sex. Mushi Productions was right on trend with competing animation studios looking to delve into a more secure film market, joining competitor Toei in Pink Film production. Tezuka turned “his back on television, investing his hopes in the world of films for grown-ups, on the understanding that the cinema market in general was still bigger for adults than it was for children” (Clements 2013). Like Belladonna, the two preceding films in the series were conceived by Tezuka and directed by Yamamoto. Each film provides the audience with a lavish feast of female flesh to varying degrees of economic and artistic triumph.
The first of the series, A Thousand and One Nights, debuted in Japan in 1969 to a moderate domestic success though it “failed to recoup its production cost…spiraling [Mushi Productions] into danger and was so fragile that the economic downturn in the early 1970s nearly destroyed it” (Clements 2013). Even so, it followed a “mini-boom of Japanese interest in the Arabian Nights” which resulted in Tezuka publishing his own manga adaptations of the popular tale. He “subsequently adapted them into this sumptuous film, faithfully including erotic elements often dropped from modern versions” (Clements 2004).
A Thousand and One Nights was the first X-Rated cartoon to be released in the the United States, arriving 2 years earlier than Ralph Bakshi’s infamous 1972 film Fritz the Cat, though it’s rating was self-applied rather than labeled by the Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA). A Thousand and One Nights, like Belladonna, contains women both using their sexuality as power and having their sexuality violated as a means of control. Multiple women in the film are raped including Mahdya, the protagonist’s daughter. Mahdya’s rape is meant to “break her spirit”, which it does. She later kills her rapist, not as retribution for her own bodily violation but “in belated revenge for her father’s death”(Clements 2004) at his hand.
The way rape is depicted in both A Thousand and One Nights and Belladonna of Sadness is not just violent. These are bold, bawdy depictions of a heinous act meant to motivate story, male characters plot lines, and, perhaps most importantly, provide a sexually satisfying and ‘serious’ backdrop for the audience. The films marketing as Pink films support the filmmaker’s intention with the rape scenes. They are ‘erotic’ and, indeed, meant to arouse.
Following the success of A Thousand and One Nights, Mushi released Cleopatra, released as Cleopatra, Queen of Sex in the United States by Xanadu Productions, in 1970. Xanadu then applied an X-rating to the film, forgoing an MPAA submission, much like it’s Animerama predecessor. They advertised the film as the “first animated movie to get an X-rating” despite Fritz the Cat premiering on April 12th, beating their April 24th release by 2 weeks(Patten). The film suffered from even more stringent cuts and production woes. Jonathan Clements, Tezuka historian, reflects,
When the release of A Thousand and One Nights failed to turn into the international success for which Tezuka had been hoping, the net shortfall on his budget receipts was 9.1 million yen. He was forced to amortize this loss onto…Cleopatra…squeezing an already tight budget, disenchanting the already overworked staff, and creating an even less realistic sales target for the production to break even. (Clements 2013)
Despite these austerity measures, the film was a commercial failure. It failed to find an audience domestically and overseas in part due it’s mixed marketing campaign. The film was neither erotic enough for a porn seeking market nor benign enough for the more casual viewer. It’s avant-garde approach distanced it from Mushi’s previous audiences. “The reviews of Cleopatra, Queen of Sex as pornography were scathing, accusing it of deliberate false advertising” (Patten). Xanadu suffered as well, going into bankruptcy after it’s release. It was after this dismal reception that Tezuka finally left Mushi Productions, focusing on Tezuka Productions.
Cleopatra centers on the titular character, a sex-expert given the task of seducing Julius Caesar to save her country. Despite Cleopatra having innate sexual charms, she is further transformed, by a wizard, into an even more irresistible sex goddess. She becomes, yet another, example of a Tezuka woman being augmented by a man to fulfill their own desires through her body. Assault is treated as background noise with “the Roman conquest of Egypt…symbolized by scenes of comically exaggerated rapes”(Patten). Following Cleopatra’s unsuccessful seduction of a stereotypically homosexual Octavian, she commits suicide with the camera lingering on her limp form. Their bodies and volition are treated as disposable.
Belladonna was made in “two years…using less than ten additional animators” (Stanfield). By the time the film was ready for release, Mushi Productions was practically bankrupt. It’s distributor, Nippon Herald Eiga, didn’t know how to market the film leading to it’s limited release and subsequent commercial failure. Though it was never officially released outside of Japan, it was well received at the 23rd Berlinale. The film developed a very small cult following but couldn’t stop Mushi from going bankrupt later that year.
Cinematic Influences
Thematically, the film draws from several sources of inspiration, daisy chaining the imagery together. Belladonna of Sadness is, technically, an adaptation of a pre-existing work, Jules Michelet’s 1863 Satanism and Witchcraft. The book “set up witchcraft in the Middle Ages as a secret religion, led by a woman and drawing on pagan sources,that sought to undermine the hybrid oppressive hierarchy of the feudal system and the Roman Catholic Church” (Wilkinson). The book follows a witch who take her religion from protest into decadence, cavorting with the devil in the moonlight. Much of the direct narrative is lifted from the book including serfdom, Jeanne & Jean’s marriage dowry, Jeanne’s initial rape by the court, the Devil’s temptation, and Jeanne succumbing to the Devil with sex. The herb, Belladonna, is mentioned as well for being both a beautiful and deadly key ingredient in witches’ potions.
Like the film, it utilizes the “theme of… powerlessness of the peasant class, and women in particular, during the Middle Ages”(Bartok) to motivate it’s characters and serve as a backdrop. Satanism and Witchcraft has since be outed as being largely historically inaccurate but “it’s regarded as one of the first sympathetic histories of witchcraft, establishing the idea that witches heal with herbs and plants and also wield their sexuality as a weapon against the powerful”(Wilkinson). Within the text, witches are called “the physicians of the people”(Michelet), those that cured the sick when no one would or could.
While these depictions of women operating outside of the imposed, typical social sphere may have empowering elements, these are still damaging exploitative examples of female sexuality dreamt up by a heterosexual male content creator. Michelet could have written a sympathetic testament to witchcraft in any way that he desired, the human mind is limitless. He choose to create a world in which the protagonist is repeatedly disavowed of any direct agency. Over and over again, the protagonist’s great beauty, naivety, and delicate nature are brought up as testaments to her virtue and value. Her empowerment is undermined by the repeated references to her physicality, sexual subjugation, and carnal exploits. The text is reminiscent of Tezuka’s Seinin manga, like The Book of Human Insects. It’s base reading is an empowerment tale about a woman but it’s rife with sexual imagery, both consensual and non, created by a heterosexual man intended for more heterosexual men. It’s impetus to titillate confuses it’s message. Sex as empowerment is an idea that can fit all too neatly into what the patriarchy already expects and imposes upon women; to sexually serve men.
The source inspiration spins into other valleys and hills entwined with symbols of French female empowerment, following Michelet’s palette and home country. Indeed, amongst the film’s “stranger conceits…is that Jeanne’s story is actually the tale of Jeanne d’Arc” (Wilkinson). Jeanne’s persecution is not just that of the nobility, but also the church. It is the priest who suggests a cleansing death by fire to ensure Jeanne is rid entirely of the Devil. Like her namesake Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne, too, is pursued by the army and burned at the stake. The close inset shots of her anguished face throughout the film, especially during her death, are reminiscent of the 1928 Carl Dreyer film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. La Passion is known for it’s use of tight close ups and unrelenting focus on the pain of it’s heroine. Jeanne d’Arc’s death brings a revolt from the peasants who shout that they’ve “killed a saint”. The framing of the heroine’s face and subsequent revolt following her death are vastly similar between the two films.
While Dreyer’s end for Jeanne d’Arc was considered and solidified it’s message, Belladonna struggled with reinforcing what it didn’t originally encourage. The 1973 ending was Jeanne’s death by burning at the stake, inspiring the peasants to revolt with each woman’s face morphing into Jeanne’s, but it was changed during the 1979 recut. The 1979 final image is that of Eugene Delacrioux’s 1830 painting Liberty leading the people tying Belladonna to not only to Jeanne D’Arc but also “Marianne, the female personification of the French Republic” (Wilkinson). According to Eiichi Yamamoto, “the final image…was added to the film in 1979 when a shortened, censored version of the film was unsuccessfully re-released in Japan… [Belladonna] was re-edited in an attempt to make it appeal more to young women, since it had been gaining a cult reputation among college students.” (Bartok). The studio wanted less “graphic eroticism that would appeal to younger female audiences” (Skelly).The addition of the painting can be seen as an attempt to reaffirm the themes of empowerment, both female and class, which seems hesitant considering the bawdy nature of the film. This is the version that is currently rereleased by Cinelicious.
Dennis Bartok, Executive Vice President of Cinelicious Acquisitions & Distribution, was key in restoring Belladonna and having it’s subsequent release and resurgence. Concerning the ambiguous ‘true’ ending, he states:
“Some of the material censored from the film in 1979 was definitely very graphic…but a number of the other cuts seem pretty random, and were probably made just to shorten the overall running time. Sadly, all this censored footage was cut from the original negative and subsequently lost — so we had to turn to the only existing 35mm print of the original release version, held at the Belgian Cinematek, to fill in this missing material for our 4k restoration. We decided to retain the added footage of Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” since it seems to fit thematically and visually with the ending of the film.” (Bartok)
Keeping the Delacroix painting in this new, now canon, version of the film solidifies this ending as the ‘true’ ending. The cap of the painting seems like a band aid on a broken femur. It doesn’t address the true problems that many viewers, including the young women of Japan at the time for whom the film was not appealing, have with Belladonna. Indeed, this painting capstone stands out strongly against Belladonna’s watercolor imagery. It’s not the image alone but also ““the absurd subtitle “…at the head of the Bastille stood the women” — and our protagonist [who] never enjoys a single instance of truly consensual sex”. Jeanne is Marianne and Jeanne D’Arc, meant to inspire strong, forward thinking women to fight against complacency and injustice, but she’s a feminist straw man. It’s “flimsy proto-Marxist-feminist” (Lucca) message is weighted down by it’s continued feminine exploitation.
Aesthetic Influences
The visual look of the film is often the defining feature of it’s appraisals. In it’s review of the film, the New York Times writes, “the impact of the story is secondary to the strangeness and beauty of the mostly still images (the camera moves slowly across them) done in styles resembling Klimt, O’Keeffe, Op Art, Ralph Steadman and the higher class of Playboy illustration (Hale)”. The film draws from a multitude of visual references both contemporary, for the time, and traditional. It’s influence of Art Nouveau painters are perhaps it’s most apparent. The cascading forms of Jeanne’s hair and body recount Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Alphonse Mucha. Medievel card decks, such as the Visconti-Sforza and Luigi Scapini tarot, served as another source of reference. The figures are despited in lush tableaus with sumptuous fabrics of mad, swirling patterns.
Much of the look of the film was directed by Kuni Fukai, Belladonna’s art director, who hand painted each still. For Fukai, “artistic freedom and quality were of upmost importance” with the film. He was “drawn to the idea that Tezuka was not particularly interested in movement. His goal was to focus on the detail of illustration” (Stanfield). Before Belladonna, Fukai was a contributor to Heibon Punch, “a cutting-edge counter-culture magazine for men that contained adult content” (Lindbergs), and Cobalt, a Shōjo [manga directed at teenage girls] fiction magazine. Shōjo was on the rise at the time, spearheading by female Japanese artists interested in telling stories from their vantage. These pioneers transformed Japanese Manga by setting their stories in Europe, utilizing empty space, alternative panel layouts, and mixing sex with eroticism. The genre didn’t shy away from the depiction of rape, used to motivate the journeys of the manga’s protagonists(Lindbergs). In a contemporary review of the film, the author dives into Fukai’s possible peer inspiration,
Another contributor to Heibon Punch was acclaimed artist Tadanori Yokoo (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief [1969]) who also created a series of animated films … Yokoo’s style shares a commonality with American pop artist Peter Max as well as Heinz Edelmann who was responsible for the production design on Yellow Submarine (1968). Despite these comparisons, the experimental nature of Tadanori Yokoo’s work has a distinct Japanese sensibility and may have influenced the unconventional construction of Belladonna of Sadness, which relies on camera pans across Kuni Fukai’s artwork to create movement reminiscent of turning the page of a comic book. (Lindbergs)
Fukai’s artistic output for Belladonna was a congruence of these various influences. His underground, raunchy sense for erotic meet the strange of Japan’s alternative animation with Shōjo’s languid sensibilities. A style is born, one that is often noted first and foremost in reviews and recollections of Belladonna. Belladonna’s Cinematographer, Shigeru Yamasaki, completed the vision with delicate framing and camera movement.
With it’s leisurely pans and delicate framing, Belladonna has direct inspiration from traditional forms of Japanese storytelling. The slow pans suggest Emaki-mono scrolls or Kamishibai. Kamishibai, revived briefly in the 20th century, involved “storytellers [who] would travel from town to town entertaining children with a box that had an opening at the front, in and out of which different painted scenes could be moved, like a 2D version of paper theatre” (Fitch). The camera movement employs these traditional forms of storytelling as it travels though the multitude of paintings. Within their long, still frames, the characters in Belladonna have no synchronized mouth movements to accompany the dialogue. This was an intentional choice on the part of Yamamoto influenced by traditional Japanese Bunraku puppet theater. Bunraku puppets have fixed mouths despite their dialogue. Yamamoto enjoyed this method of storytelling and emphatically employed it in Belladonna.
Perhaps it’s most clear contemporary reference is during the final rape scene. Jeanne acquiesces to the Devil’s desires and an image rich, psychedelic montage illustrates this union, directly reminiscent of 1968’s Yellow Submarine, by George Dunning, both in content and color, which itself was inspired by the artist Peter Max. The colors used in this segment are candy and unlike any others seen in the film. We see anachronistic flashes of astronauts, computers, jet planes, cities, women, canned food, hockey players, television, bombs, samurai, soldiers, musicians, nature, and much, much more. A volcano erupts, flowers flash, and a slow zoom out of a burgundy phallus comes into frame. The phallus slowly morphs into a freshly reborn Jeanne ready to begin this new, evil, chapter in her life.
A rose by any other name
Jeanne uses her magic benevolently. She chews flowers and spits it into medicine to save the townsfolk from the Black Death. These plants scare the locals as they are known to be poisonous. In this way, Jeanne is Belladonna, an “indigenous plant” of Europe known for it’s poisonous beauty. It’s mentioned directly in Satanism and Witchcraft as a particularly dangerous plant that the witches use in their potions and cures.The notorious herb was often used to enhance beauty but at a potentially deadly cost. It “cures the dancing fits while making you dance” (Michelet). According to the 1879 The homœopathic vade mecum of modern medicine and surgery by E. H. Harris,
“It has a fleshy, creeping root, and herbaceous stem, bearing a beautiful, sweet, but highly poisonous berry, which, when bruised, emits a fetid, nauseating odor…It’s specific name Belladonna [signifies] a beautiful lady. This has been said to be owing to its being used a cosmetic for the face; but more probably from its being employed to dilate the pupils — a practice still adopted by some Parisian women, as it is supposed to confer on them additional charms…The most striking symptoms produced by a poisonous dose [are]…complete coma and death.” (Harris)
This plant, and it’s properties, fit directly into the film and it’s protagonist. Jeanne is a beautiful woman, the most beautiful in her village. It’s this beauty which directly leads to her power and calamity. Belladonna is a beautiful tragedy, alluring and deadly. Without it, Jean could have paid the tithe of one cow. Without it, Jeanne would have never been raped by the Lord. And still, without out, she would have never come into her witchcraft saving the townsfolk from the plague. Michelet reflects on the Belladonna plant that “Satan uses them and turns them into remedies” (Michelet). Satan uses the potent plant for his own ends and interests. Jeanne is, truly, the Belladonna of despair, woe, and sadness.
Tragedy of Belladonna
Following Jeanne’s second rape by the Lord, she retreats to the woods where she, again, meets the devil. His form here is more phallic than ever, colored a deep crimson with deep ridges. He laughs at Jeanne’s misfortune, telling her that she is at wit’s end without even Jean’s support or love. He tells her that he has been with her since the beginning and that she is seductive. She denies this, telling the Devil that he made her this way, driving her to the Hell. He claims to have created her and urges her to accept a soul that will take revenge on those that have wronged her. It is what he wants most. Jeanne’s lithe body excites him, causing him to ‘erect’ and grow even larger. He says he’ll grant her any wish that she wants, to which she replies, “I want to do anything evil”. The Devil is pleased and asks for the payment of her soul. She accepts and they sexually consummate the deal to a flush of colorful montages.
In this meeting with the devil, the phallic overtones are at it’s strongest. If the earlier iterations were phallic suggestion, this form is a diagram of the form. At at low angle shot, the thick, coarse hair tangles around his base leading up to the mushroomed tip of his head. When he becomes sexually aroused by Jeanne, he grows even larger and shoots upward into the sky. It is no oddity that this form involves the scene requiring Jeanne to fully submit her body to him. She must give her soul and body over to this fully erect penis. It is not meant to be subtle and it is not.
As she accepts the deal, a Dahlia flower blooms and fills the frame directly suggesting the form of a vulva. It fades and reveals Jeanne, legs akimbo, being penetrated by an oversized phallus. As the act continues, the lines of her figure become less concentrated and specific. She blends and morphs, fading in and out of the devil’s coloring. The color choice here is at one of it’s strongest contrasts. The devil holds fast in varying shades of red and brown, with deep blues filling his background. Jeanne features strongly in purples and yellows, eventually blending into the Devil’s colors as she succumbs to his will.
This is the segment that negates any agency that Jeanne may have had. Her actions from here on out fulfill not her desires, but that of the Devil. He wishes Jeanne to take on an evil soul and exact revenge on townspeople. His wishes become a reality, using her body as a conduit for the activity. Jeanne, from the onset of the film, wanted to fulfill her domestic desires for home and family. Her subsequent actions are completely at odds with her wishes and earlier intent. While a change in want is not uncommon for a narrative story, these wants are introduced originally not as her’s, but as the Devil’s. The following orgiastic scenes of sexual revenge satisfy the Devil’s inclinations.
Since the release of this film, it has been heralded as a ‘Feminist’ tale of of sex and witchcraft. Spectrevision, one of the co-presenter’s of the film rerelease, takes this stance staunchly. Elijah Wood, one of the owners of Spectrevision, said this plainly in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Wood states, “We take the stance that it’s effectively a feminist film. It’s very much about female empowerment” (Collis). This is a wholly misguided interpretation of the film. Belladonna is rife with “transgressive pop-porn and the kind of outright misogyny that mars so many otherwise righteous female-driven revenge narratives” (McCormack). Jeanne is empowered only as far as to actualize the desires of a male Devil, a literal phallus. Jeanne is a character created by men and does not exist in a vacuum of her own will. One of the film’s biggest supporters, Dennis Bartok, finds the piece difficult to endorse as empowering citing the “graphic and alarming” depiction of her abuse. Bartok contends that the film straddles “art-house and exploitation, and contains strong elements of both feminism and an overtly sexualized depiction of Jeanne” (Bartok). The overly sexual nature of Jeanne as a poison sweetness meant to be consumed invalidates the, possible, intent of the creators for her to be interpreted as Feminist hero.
“A Figure of Tremendous Sadness”
Jeanne is tormented again and again by the society around her until she burns. Her body is taken from her, her soul is taken, and her agency has long since been absent. The manipulative use of her body and sex is used, narratively, to fulfill the whims of the literal phallus that she serves. Directly, her body is used to titillate and satisfy the heterosexual male audience for which the film was conceived, created, and meant to be enjoyed by. It’s release by Osamu Tezuka, who had a catalog of sexually exploiting his female characters, with Mushi Productions, who had a pedigree of sexually dehumanizing their female characters, from the Jules Michelet book Satanism and Witchcraft, all exhibit a gross misunderstanding of female empowerment especially through female sexuality. The women in these works are rarely, if at all, given agency with which to make sexual decisions for themselves. The values are that of their creators, reflected back upon them, created from limitless potential. Dennis Bartok describes Jeanne as a “figure of tremendous sadness” (Bartok) and, indeed, she is. Jeanne had all the potential of an empowering figure but was never given a chance.
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