and movement scattered throughout". Jasper Sharp of Midnight Eye also observed that its visuals, designed by illustrator Kuni Fukai, resemble modernist and Art Nouveau painters such as Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon, Alphonse Mucha, Egon Schiele and Félicien Rops. Production of the film lasted from 1967 to 1973. The film was a commercial failure and contributed to Mushi Pro going bankrupt by the end of the year. The film was entered into the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival. The film had general releases in some mainland European countries as well as Japan, and some one-off screenings the United States, including in 2009, and underwent a 4K digital restoration for theatrical release in May 2016. Hat & Beard Press on August 26, 2016, released a companion book containing illustrations, script outtakes, film stills and staff interviews. The restoration was screened on July 10, 2015, in a preview at Japan Cuts, and then played on September 24 at Fantastic Fest in Austin before a theatrical run beginning May 6, 2016, in New York City and San Francisco. Because of the film's obscurity, various sources list its running time as anywhere from 86 to 93 minutes. Cinelicious Pics clarified in May 2016 that its 86-minute restoration represented the correct running time, saying that this length had been cut down by approximately eight minutes for an unsuccessful re-release in Japan in 1979 (with the addition of the brief ending shot of Eugène Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, which was not in the original version, but Cinelicious left it in the restored version). Cinelicious restored the censored footage from the sole surviving 35 mm release print of the full-length version at the Cinematek in Belgium, which agreed to do a 4K scan of the missing sections from their print. Reception Belladonna of Sadness holds a 90% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Belladonna of Sadness has more than enough brilliant visual artistry to keep audiences enraptured even as the film's narrative reach slightly exceeds its grasp". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100 based on 12 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In 2016, Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times reviewed the film, calling it dated by today's standards, saying that it "looks exploitative and misogynistic 43 years later".