Criterion Sunday 299: 春婦伝 Shunpuden (Story of a Prostitute, 1965)

Suzuki has a masterful sense of constructing an image, which you might expect given his intensive record of filmmaking throughout the 60s resulting in some of the most eye-catching set design and at times dabbling in pop art iconography. This one sticks to black-and-white for its World War II-period story about a young woman who is pressed into ‘service’ on the frontlines in China, where she falls for the eager young Private Mikami (Tamio Kawachi) who serves under a rather more brutal superior officer (Isao Tamagawa). Along with her story (and the actor Yumiko Nogawa is excellent, really tearing into the material with gusto), the film also takes aim at Japanese military policy and the dehumanising nature of warfare, as the private finds himself on trial for being captured by the enemy (despite being unconscious at the time). It’s a fascinating film and one made with Suzuki’s usual flair.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writer Hajime Takaiwa 高岩肇 (based on the novel by Tajiro Tamura 田村泰次郎); Cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka 永塚一栄; Starring Yumiko Nogawa 野川由美子, Tamio Kawachi 川地民夫, Isao Tamagawa 玉川伊佐男; Length 96 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Sunday 15 March 2020.

Criterion Sunday 298: 肉体の門 Nijukai no Mon (Gate of Flesh, 1964)

Seijun Suzuki certainly made a surfeit of luridly-coloured borderline-exploitation films during the 1960s, directed with evident panache and a certain gonzo charm. The opening sequences of this particular film hurtle through at a breakneck pace, leaving scant moments for pause or reflection (whether on the part of the characters or the audience). The film is set in the post-war ruins of Tokyo, expressively evoked by a soundstage set that, with its saturated colours, at time suggests Fassbinder’s later Querelle — in its psycho-sexual undertones, if not quite to the homoerotic degree that Fassbinder takes it (though we get our share of Joe Shishido’s sweat-drenched naked body). If the events are lurid — about a band of tough prostitutes working amongst this post-war detritus, trying to eke out a living while flagrantly punishing any of their peers who breaks their code — they suggest a certain moral grey area that existed at the time. Many shots centre the US flag of occupation, and the presence of American military police is constant, as they patrol and are frequently mocked and physically abused and attacked by people who have very little food and few opportunities to get ahead, though already we see gangsters making a space for themselves in this uncertain economy. Scenes of sexual torture push it in darker directions, but the focus remains on the vicissitudes of difficult lives at a transitional moment in Japanese history.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writers Tajiro Tamura 田村泰次郎 and Goro Tanada 棚田吾郎; Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine 峰重義; Starring Yumiko Nogawa 野川由美子, Joe Shishido 宍戸錠, Tomiko Ishii 石井トミコ, Kayo Matsuo 松尾嘉代; Length 90 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 18 February 2020.

Criterion Sunday 269: けんかえれじい Kenka Ereji (Fighting Elegy, 1966)

Certainly a striking film from Seijun Suzuki, though he’s not exactly a director known for being boring. It’s set in the 1930s, as Japan teeters on the brink of militaristic nationalism, and the hero Kazoku (Hideki Takahashi) seems to be a prime candidate for making that particular journey. He’s raised Catholic and in love with a girl at his boarding house, but repressed sexuality and masculine bravado means he gets into lots of fights with his peers at school. Being Suzuki, these are all choreographed with an almost comic glee, though they do go on rather a bit as the film progresses. It feels both comically satirical about Japan’s recent past, but also imbued with the confusion of youth. It’s rather a marvel.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writer Kaneto Shindo 新藤兼人 (based on the novel by Takashi Suzuki 鈴木隆); Cinematographer Kenji Hagiwara 萩原憲治; Starring Hideki Takahashi 高橋英樹; Length 86 minutes.

Seen at Close-Up Film Centre, London, Saturday 21 September 2019.

Criterion Sunday 268: 野獣の青春 Yaju no Seishun (Youth of the Beast, 1963)

I can’t honestly tell you I understood every twist and turn in this film about a man seeking revenge for the death of his friend. It starts out in black-and-white as we happen upon an apparent double-suicide of a cop and his girlfriend, though even here there is a splash of colour in some roses, before we barrel straight into the rest of the movie, in sharp poppy colours in a widescreen format. In truth it’s the visuals that really stand out here, and director Suzuki has an eye for framing in what is very much a stylish picture. As for the plot, our anti-hero Jo (played by the easily-recognisable Joe Shishido) swings through various setups involving gangsters and hangers-on, pretty liberally wielding his fists, guns and even a spraycan he’s adapted into a flamethrower to elicit the information he wants about who was responsible for what in those opening scenes he clearly thinks was a murder. It zips along at a good pace but it always retains its pop-art appeal.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writers Ichiro Ikeda 池田一朗 and Tadaaki Yamazaki 山崎忠昭 (based on the novel 人狩り by Haruhiko Oyabu 大藪春彦); Cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka 永塚一栄; Starring Joe Shishido 宍戸錠, Misako Watanabe 渡辺美佐子; Length 92 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Friday 20 September 2019.

ピストルオペラ Pisutoru opera (Pistol Opera, 2001)

Unquestionably a singular and odd film by veteran filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, revisiting themes in his early-career masterpiece Branded to Kill, albeit with a woman assassin. The ‘opera’ aspect of the title shouldn’t be underestimated, as, although without songs, it has a lot of the theatricality of that format: the frontal staging, addresses to camera, the high-key lighting in a very clear and uncluttered frame, and the very frugal use of movement. Suzuki at times prefers to use empty shots with strong sound effects over people doing things in frame. So in short, it’s not your ordinary film. Like opera, though, the plot is actually fairly straightforward: an assassin (Makiko Esumi), ranked #3 by her Guild, has to contend with her fellow assassins (not least the mysterious Hundred Eyes, #1), in order to claim the first place, while also being stalked by a 10-year-old wannabe (Hanae Kan). It may be filmed in a very idiosyncratic way, but it’s never without visual flair and parades an array of gorgeous saturated colours.

CREDITS
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writers Kazunori Ito 伊藤和典 and Takeo Kimura 木村威夫; Cinematographer Yonezo Maeda 前田米造; Starring Makiko Esumi 江角マキコ, Sayoko Yamaguchi 山口小夜子, Hanae Kan 韓英恵, Masatoshi Nagase 永瀬正敏; Length 112 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 17 January 2017.

Criterion Sunday 39: 東京流れ者 Tokyo Nagaremono (Tokyo Drifter, 1966)

Seijun Suzuki’s final film for Japanese film studio Nikkatsu was Branded to Kill (covered last week, as the films are numbered in reverse chronological order by Criterion), but it shares certain generic traits in common with the previous year’s Tokyo Drifter. They’re both yakuza gangster films with outsider protagonists, but where the later film dealt with a hitman (whose work is naturally lonesome), here our hero is pushed into his drifter lifestyle. Tetsuya Watari plays a gangster of the same first name (generally abbreviated to Tetsu) whose boss has retired. When he turns down the advances of a rival, his peripatetic fate is sealed. Plotwise, there’s other stuff in there (a girl, a double-cross), but as always with Suzuki it’s the style that shines through. Tetsu isn’t just a drifter, he’s a drifter with a catchy title song that crops up throughout the film, and as the initial black-and-white scenes soon break into vibrant colour, it’s quickly established that he has a quirky style, dressed in a powder-blue suit on his journeys. There’s not a huge deal of depth to it, but it’s a concise film with a sure sense of its own stylishness.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writer Yasunori Kawauchi 川内康範; Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine 峰重義; Starring Tetsuya Watari 渡哲也; Length 82 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Sunday 31 May 2015.

Criterion Sunday 38: 殺しの烙印 Koroshi no Rakuin (Branded to Kill, 1967)

By this point, director Seijun Suzuki had already proven his directorial credentials. I’ve reviewed the previous year’s Carmen from Kawachi, and another film from that year will come up next week (Tokyo Drifter), each an off-beat cinematic journey around familiar generic outlines. Both the latter film and the one under discussion here take on the gangster film genre, and the fact Suzuki was fired by his studio and blacklisted by the industry after Branded to Kill suggests its lack of commercial success, though surely his stylistic flights of fancy are as much to blame. After all, it’s exactly the kind of film you’d imagine late-night Western audiences looking for a 2001 or Saragossa Manuscript-style headtrip would love (though it didn’t reach that market until the 1980s). However, this does mean that the intricacies of the plot remain somewhat opaque and difficult to recall — in outline, it’s about contract killer Goro Hanada (endearingly chubby-cheeked Joe Shishido) who variously falls in love and is haunted by the failure of a mission, but I can’t tell you more than that. What’s wonderful about the film, and repays each viewing, is the delirium found within the cinematic frame, firing off traditional gangster cliches against monochrome film noir stylings, pop art influences and at times a stripped-back kabuki aesthetic. As one example amongst many, tropes like the hero’s oversexualised libido are sent up by Hanada’s obsession with the smell of steamed rice. What results for the viewer is something of a confusing journey, but whatever else it might be, it’s never a boring one.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writer Hachiro Guryu 具流八郎; Cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka 永塚一栄; Starring Joe Shishido 宍戸錠; Length 98 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Sunday 31 May 2015.

February 2015 Film Viewing Round-Up

Herewith some brief thoughts about films I saw in February which I didn’t review in full.

Big Hero 6 (2014, USA)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935, USA)
Kawachi Karumen (Carmen from Kawachi) (1966, Japan)
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988, USA)
Lifeforce (1985, USA)
Lovelace (2013, USA)
La Reine Margot (1994, France/Italy)
The Selfish Giant (2013, UK)
Somersault (2004, Australia)
Stop Making Sense (1984, USA)