This 1932 adaptation is the earliest sound version of the much-filmed story of the loyal 47 retainers. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa is now best known in the West as the maker of the avant-garde silent films Kurutta ichipeji (A Page of Madness, 1926) and Crossroads (Jujiro, 1928), but Chushingura is in fact more typical of his output than these experimental works. He was primarily a specialist in jidai-geki (period films), and originally earned his international reputation through festival screenings of Jigokumon (Gate of Hell, 1953), the first Japanese period film to be made in colour.
As the first sound version of the Chushin­gura narrative, the film was something of an event, and “Kinema Junpo” devoted a whole page to the film. But the maga­zine’s reviewer commented with some irony on the commercial motives behind its production. “The Chushingura story is bread and butter for the actors and the movie companies. If you don’t know what to programme, put out a Chushingura! If you are having financial troubles, put out a Chushingura! Because it is a certainty that the customers will come flocking, and that is a reason in itself”. He felt that the use of sound was insufficiently daring, and although he praised the acting of Tsu­masaburo Bando and Utaemon Ichikawa, he dismissed the performance of co-star Chojiro Hayashi, while Kinuyo Tanaka was criticised for speaking in dialect. He was impressed by Kohei Sugiyama’s cinema­tography, but ultimately found the film underwhelming given its stellar cast and gifted director and cinematographer. De­spite this mixed review, the film ranked third in that year’s “Kinema Junpo” crit­ics’ poll, and Joseph Anderson and Don­ald Richie later wrote that “not only the sound but the quick cutting was admired by many critics”.