Cast:
Joe Shishido (Goro Hanada), Koji Nanbara (the Number One Killer), Isao Tamagawa (Michihiko Yabuhara), Annu Mari (Misako Nakajo), Mariko Ogawa (Mami Hanada), and Hiroshi Minami (Gihei Kasuga) Directed by Seijun Suzuki.
Review:
"It's not really the genre I'm interested in, but the character of the yakuza or a killer. They wander between life and death. As a character they are more interesting than normal people. They live very near death, so we can describe how they die, where they die, and when they die. You have a wider range of possibilities than you otherwise would if you were depicting a normal person."
See, there are maverick film directors anywhere you look, you just have to find them. Seijun Suzuki actually studied first at a trade school in Tokyo in 1941 and wanted to apply to the college of the Ministry of Agriculture before failing the entrance exam that had him land in Hirosaki instead. He got recruited to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army in 1943, which resulted in a series of incidents such as multiple ship wrecks, service as a trainee officer that saw him spent most of his money "on booze and women" (in his words), and a closing rank of Second Lieutenant in the Meteorological Corps. He found certain horrors of war comical, such as an occasion of him being thrown into the sea during a bombing raid. At any rate, he went back to Hirosaki to continue his studies after the war ended before trying to apply to the University of Tokyo before failing out and finding a place at the film department of the Kamakura Academy. In 1948, he took and passed the entrance exam at the Shochiku Company and became an assistant director. He described his work there as being "a melancholy drunk". He got hired in 1954 by Nikkatsu, which had been closed during the war-time era by the government and relied on luring assistants with better pay. He soon graduated to directing in 1956, for which Suzuki would make a variety of features at the company, such as pop musicals, comedies, and action films. However, he had a desire for better quality scripts, as he felt that the only way to deal with B-tier scripts was to "have fun" with the material in playing with stylization, much to the chagrin of the studio. Youth of the Beast (1963) and The Bastard (1963) are considered turning points in his career, with Suzuki referring to the former as his "first truly original film" and the latter an important one in "making the fundamental illusion of cinema more powerful" (referring to his collaboration with Takeo Kimura as designer) Suzuki directed only eight films after basically being blacklisted after the release of this film (with his last one being in 2005), but Zigeunerweisen (1980), the first in what became his "Taishō Roman Trilogy", was a noted success among the indie circuit before dying in 2017 at the age of 93. The influence of a film that was originally a massive failure has spread far and wide, ranging from esteemed directors such as John Woo and Quentin Tarantino to others such as Jim Jarmusch (who mirrored a particular scene from this film for his own feature in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai).
The story goes that Nikkatsu wanted to make a low-budget B-movie (a hitman movie that wasn't too far off from what they usually did with yakuza films) that would have Shishido as star. When they hated the script given to them, they asked Suzuki to rewrite and direct. The result was one that saw a script written by Hachiro Guryu (translates to "Group of Eight"), which was the combined efforts of Suzuki, Takeo Kimura, Atsushi Yamatoya, Yōzō Tanaka, Chūsei Sone, Yutaka Okada, Seiichirō Yamaguchi and Yasuaki Hangai. Suzuki's style of collaboration and improvisation is how one gets the idea to have a killer that loves the smell of boiled rice or actors play the roles as they saw fit. How many movies do you know that have butterflies come onto the screen that signifies obsessive love? Or characters that sleep with their eyes open and urinate where they sit? This is a spontaneous movie that plays fast and loose with the genre of noir in being a freeform oddball movie. People in this film are ciphers and the action is abstract, complete with a cat-and-mouse climax that can only be watched for oneself rather than trying to describing it in detail. It is as if Suzuki made films about things he wanted to understand rather than make a so-called "comprehensible movie", where time and space are just wherever the hell he chooses. He aspires to entertain in a way that might actually seem quite modern to those who look for offbeat character films (whether as action or road movies), complete with delirious cuts and a striking look that ends up making more sense the further one gets into its absurd mind. It is probably the biggest indictment of expectations one could imagine: if you think you are getting a gangster movie filled with sex and violence, you will get all that and plenty more within a lurid package that likely requires multiple viewings to really absorb itself, although the less patient will obviously find little to stick with; the ones who pay attention and the ones who don't pay attention might have similar reactions. Shishido became an actor in the mid-1950s, but he only started to get bigger parts when he underwent surgery to make his cheekbones bigger, which resulted in a number of action parts, including a handful of Suzuki films. He makes for an ideal absurd man to fit an absurd film, the perfect anti-hero fool. He glides with the grace of a clumsy cat trying to leap onto a ledge, being curious all the while. Ogawa was a burlesque dancer that did the film because none of the ladies in the studio were willing to do the role (which is spent mostly in the nude). It was her only film appearance, and she makes the most of it in terms of eccentricity of raw charm that sticks out far more than just being someone used for scenes of, uh, intense, lovemaking. Mari and her thoughts of death at the time of making the film made an odd pairing when it came to accepting a script for a character obsessed with death, which results in a worthy pairing in the macabre with Shishido as a riff on the femme fatale. Nanbara seems more a riff on stern studio executives who wear down certain players, which works well in terms of making the ideal conniving figure in a film filled with cofounding types, particularly since he only steps into focus midway through the 91 minute runtime.
The film was such a failure in theaters that it was removed from distribution as soon as it could be, and his pay was dropped not a year later (the company president once said that not only did Suzuki make incomprehensible films, he also should "open a noodle shop or something instead"); the company even went so far as to not allow his films to be distributed or released, which ticked off a student-run film society that wanted to do a retrospective on Suzuki's career. He then sued the company for breach of contract (among other things), which resulted in the company being found to have used Suzuki as a scapegoat for their financial bungling. Suzuki got his apology but did not return to the director's chair until A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness in 1977, for which he spent his time doing commercials and supervisor in anime. Nikkatsu made their own "reimagining" with Trapped in Lust (made in 1973 as one of their "Roman Porno" films, which were sexploitation films), while Suzuki directed a loose sequel filmed at Nikkatsu with Pistol Opera (2001). As a whole, it may not be up to everyone's speed when it comes to what you might think of in terms of crime thrillers, but it will surely prove to stick in one's mind long after it has played its final trick, which works mostly for the better for those who like who is behind it. It may be the kind of movie you look back on with reverence or the opposite, but it endures regardless.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
I say this now only because I have a surprise in mind if things go well: Go Bills.
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