This 1962 Japanese drama shows up on IMDb as Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow. Either title fits the beautifully stylized, operatic, and unpredictable fable by Tomu Uchida, an actor, and director who got his start behind the camera well before the arrival of sound in movies. Mad Fox is a hypnotic, widescreen fantasia that begins as a story of palace intrigue at a perilous time. A white rainbow appears in the sky, and is taken to be an omen of an empire soon to split among dissident factions. The emperor wants solutions and there is one answer allegedly written in a secret scroll that can only be interpreted by the heir to a murdered, court advisor. But there are two such potential recipients of the scroll: the scheming Doman (Shinji Amano) and the diffident Yasuna (Hashizo Akawa). The advisor's daughter, Sakaki (Michiko Saga), endorses Yasuna to the emperor, but Doman and the advisor's widow subsequently torture her to death, driving Yasuna mad. The story pivots to Yasuna's long spell in a dreamy wilderness of golden skies and a rotating meadow of yellow flowers. He seems to have become the elaborately outfitted Sakaki in his own mind, but when rescued by the guardians of Sakaki's twin sister Kuzunoha (Saga), he looks like himself again but is delusional with grief. He believes Kuzunoaha to be Sakaki, a misunderstanding she indulges out of love for him. Then things get really interesting after Yasuna's rescue of an old woman who is one of a number of reclusive white foxes in human form. His good deed leads to one of the foxes taking Sakaki's likeness (Saga, obvious;y very busy). This third act of Mad Fox is easily the film's most fascinating, the sets and wooded backdrop entirely artifice, underscoring how the film has evolved into wild lore about the dream of love and inevitability of loss. Strongly recommended. (T. Keogh)