In medieval France probably, Jean and Jeanne (voices of Takao Itou and Aiko Nagayama, respectively) are newlyweds; beautiful, pure, all that shit. Unfortunately, their marriage happens to be just in time for taxes, and even selling the prize dairy cow ain’t providing enough for the feudal lord (v/o Masaya Takahashi) and his coffers. Appealing to the seigneuresse (v/o Shigako Shimegi) for clemency, she comes up with solution of invoking le droit de cuissage on the virginal Jeanne. Having been thoroughly violated, she returns home where her husband, at best, can barely look at her and certainly doesn’t seem interested in actually loving her anymore. Still, she loves him for some reason. Her ensuing frustration and misery however conjure up a devil (v/o Tatsuya Nakadai), an unsubtly phallic devil at that. He’ll get her through these tough times, if she really wants, and tough times are very much afoot; it’s going to be a hard winter, and he’d be surprised if her lousy husband makes it to the spring the way he’s going. Using her incredible spinning ability, Jeanne whips up the fanciest of thread to sell at market. She not only makes enough cash to get them through winter, but they’re still flush when the old seigneur comes begging. Their fiscal competence is so that Jean gets made tax collector, despite not really doing anything. Such is this reversal of fortune, that rumours start flying of Jeanne being in league with Satan.

The inconsistently titled Belladonna of Sadness† is the third and last of the Animerama series of erotic animated films of the late ‘60s / early ‘70s. Well, sort of. It was marketed under the brand ‘Animeromanesque’ instead for one thing, and Nippon Herald Films had backed another racy animated feature that was released during the interim between the earlier Cleopatra (1970) and this; the dubiously titled ‘Yasuji’s Pornorama: Do It!’ (1971); which, firstly, sounds super edifying, doesn’t it? But more relevantly which Japanese Wikipedia counts as part of the cycle of films, although it doesn’t appear to have any creative overlap with Mushi Production’s trio of films. Not least because it was actually made by a studio called Tokyo Telebi Douga, but also, like, in terms of its very concept and sensibility and all that; erstwhile Mushi Production head honcho Osamu Tezuka was pretty big on the idea of the Animerama films being artistic in their portrayal of sexuality rather than being crude or vulgar or actually, you know, pornographic (whether or not they succeed in that is another question entirely that will not be answered here). Elsewhere, 1990’s (well, maybe? Some places say 1991 and generally it doesn’t seem to be a very well documented thing) The Sensualist shares a connection with the generally accepted films in the form of Eiichi Yamamoto’s presence, albeit purely in screenwriting capacity, as well as their more artsy sensibility and classical choice of source material.

That’s by the by. Belladonna is ostensibly adapted from La Sorcière (1862), a book by nineteenth century French historian Jules Michelet about the witchcraft in Europe during the Middle Ages… for the most part, anyway, it drifts into later periods in the back half. It is not actually a novel, but instead would probably fall under the banner of ‘creative non-fiction’. Essentially Michelet weaved his hypotheses and all that surrounding the subject into a loose fictional narrative to illustrate whatever it is he’s on about; the central theme being that women were subjugated by and within the church and state, and so turned to witchcraft as a way of having their own power within society. It’s largely of note for being a remarkably early broadly sympathetic treatment on the history of witchcraft. It’s also apparently highly inaccurate. Regardless, it’s probably better to view the film as more ‘inspired by’ Michelet’s writings than ‘adapted from’.

In the ‘70s, Mushi Production was in a bad way. I think I’ve brought this up before, but this time it’s entirely relevant. This is perhaps down to Cleopatra underperforming, although the studio was already beginning to fall apart during that film’s production, and seemingly long before. A lot of their capital and workforce was tied up in the production of that film, but there was apparently as idea amongst vast swathes of the company that the film was a disaster in the offing and that Tezuka was the only person who couldn’t see it. Whether or not that was strictly true, who knows? Although while Tezuka was busy with his rare directing gig, the company manager was registering a bunch of copyrights under his own name and also apparently poaching a bunch of talent for his own studio. It’s all very dodgy. Of course, the idea that it was evident that Cleopatra was going to bomb seems… plausible, watching it. Anyway, yes, with the studio crumbling, work was started on Belladonna, ostensibly to save the company, but it more seems like they were aware that it was beyond saving so they may as well go nuts with it. Compared to the army of animators that’d worked on the other films, supposedly (according to Yamamoto) turning them out in all of six months, Belladonna got itself a skeleton crew and, as you might have noticed from the earlier dates, took a good three years to reach the screen. The cut backs are fairly apparent; the film runs a good half hour shorter than Cleopatra (much less A Thousand and One Nights (1969), which, for a time, held the record for the longest animated film), it’s a flat academy ratio rather than the scope of the earlier films, and perhaps most obviously there is a lot less actual animation, relying heavily on panning stills and fading between illustrations. This nevertheless resulted in an unusual aesthetic, one that feels particularly so for being an ostensibly mainstream piece of Japanese animation, with the lush art style and designs being inspired more directly by the likes of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele than the more typical aesthetics of medium (which, back then in particular, was largely influenced by, you guessed it, Tezuka’s comic art work, itself generally deemed inspired by American cartoons of the ‘20s and ‘30s). To be fair, this isn’t an entirely radical break from the earlier films; while maintaining Tezuka’s signature look, both A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra do also draw pretty heavily on artwork appropriate to the scenarios. Also akin to those films, Belladonna is laced with a dash of pop psychedelia… although in this instance ‘a dash’ might be underselling it in terms of the imagery afoot. 

The film has quite its share of violent imagery, sexual or otherwise, even beyond the initial rape scene, which while done in an artsy style is thoroughly unambiguous as to what’s meant to be being portrayed. This sort of stuff coupled with the serious tone of the work, especially in comparison to what came before, makes it all kind of a hard difficult prospect (not that it’s entirely po-faced, but it’s a lot more bleak and doesn’t have the persistent comic tone of its older siblings); while marketing for the extensive restoration a while back tries to position it as some lost feminist masterwork, it’s somewhat hard to jive this as the film’s exploitationy roots are fairly self-evident. The sexualisation of Jeanne and her suffering are pretty explicit, although to be frank, given the nightmarish nature of the imagery surrounding much of it, it seems bizarre to think that anyone could be getting off on it (the world being what it is, it’s more-or-less certain there are people who are, but whatever). Not indeed, that reading values, intended or otherwise, into exploitation films is necessarily a bad thing, or indeed that exploitation film itself is inherently bad; while not necessarily empowering in the strictest sense, they did often afford women and minorities a variety of roles that weren’t forthcoming respectable cinema. Belladonna’s own cult was seemingly built quite by accident largely on the film’s surprise popularity with female students back in the late ‘70s, prompting the director to recut the ending to amplify the feminist-ish themes.‡ That said, its image of female martyrdom is still a pretty far cry from what would by typically deemed feminist; Jeanne inevitably dies at the end at the hand of The Man™, and even with the ending that expounds on what this means, it sits kind of awkwardly with her incessant self-sacrifice for the sake of her awful husband who is always on hand to betray her at the drop of a hat. Then again, her foolishness in that regard could be read as the point. With that said, Kimberly Lindbergs does point out that such things are very much a peculiarity of a Japanese brand of feminism, especially when this was made, that nonetheless feels a bit antithetical from a western perspective. Less ambiguous from said perspective, on the other hand, are the themes of corruption and hypocrisy within the church and state; this one assumes is lifted pretty much straight from the book, as Michelet was big into republicanism and very down on religious and political tyranny (which might be redundant, as historically those things have been very linked).

For its faults, Belladonna is probably the best and most artistically successful of the Animerama films (even if its status as one is somewhat retroactive). Perhaps due to the nature of its creation it has a consistency of tone and a lack of self-indulgence, ironically despite its decadent aesthetic, which help make its themes pop in a snappy manner, helped by its gorgeous artwork.

…I almost said that it has a confidence the others lack, but if there’s one thing Cleopatra has it’s confidence in whatever it’s doing.

† ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ is a pretty much literal translation of the Japanese title. I’d have thought rendering it as ‘sorrow’ or something rather than ‘sadness’ would have sounded better, but whatever. Beyond that though, the title card for the film provides the name ‘La Sorcière’ in the Latin alphabet alongside the Japanese title. Meanwhile Japanese video releases have simply ‘Belladonna’ on the cover next to the Japanese title. Confusing the issue further, it seems that Mushi Production at one point deemed that the official English title for licensing purposes should be ‘The Tragedy of Belladonna’; at time of writing, they still actually refer to it as such on their website.

‡ There are actually several recuts of the film. The altered ending and added short epilogue mentioned there wasn’t the first recut; Japanese Wikipedia counts six versions total. The most common version (including the 2016 restoration) restores a bunch of the sex and avant-garde stuff that got cut along the way, but features the expanded ending from the ’79 cut. Notable stuff that’s still missing in this version include a five-minute live action interlude by photographer Daidō Moriyama that occurs after Jeanne finally succumbs to the devil around the midpoint, and the original ending, such as it was. The former was only in previews apparently and was cut by the time the film went on general release; given Moriyama’s status these days (and the fact that reportedly a print with the footage does still exist), it’s kind of surprising that’s never been reinstituted.