ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE EAST

REVIEWED - THE HIDDEN BLADE/KAKUSHI-KEN: ONI NO TSUME: ASIAN cinema boffins have complained that Yôji Yamada's elegiac Twilight Samurai and this equally winning follow-up bear no contemporary traces whatsoever.

Shot in subdued colours, which contrast markedly with the dazzling shades of so many of the period films from China and Hong Kong that make their way here, both Japanese pictures speak of the exchange of influence between western and samurai epics that went on in the 1950s and 1960s.

That explains their charm. Encountering The Hidden Blade is like happening upon a lost Kurosawa film or a suppressed John Ford drama. Slow, thoughtful, but always accessible, Yamada's picture shows it is possible to return to older forms and techniques without resorting to pastiche.

Based, like The Twilight Samurai, on stories by the popular writer Shuhei Fujisawa, the film details the travails of Munezo Katagiri (Masatoshi Nagase), a samurai who has never raised his sword in anger. It is the middle of the 19th century and, as explained in 2003's stupid Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai, the ancient traditions are under threat from western influences. In the course of the picture Munezo falls in love with a girl from a lower caste, studies how to use the new artillery weapons and, in a stirring penultimate sequence, is called upon to defeat a rebellious former colleague.

Though one arm does get severed in dramatic fashion, readers eager for a nonstop carnival of mayhem are likely to encounter disappointment. That said, the film's big sword fight, during which the camera, hitherto mostly earthbound, creeps around at tree level, is so elegantly and gracefully filmed that only the greatest philistine should resist mollification.

How pleasant it is to relate that the film of the week is directed by a 74-year-old veteran. Grey power!