Tag: 1950s

So Young, So Bright (AKA Janken Musume, ジャンケン娘, Toshio Sugie, 1955)

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Janken MusumePop stars invading the cinematic realm either for reasons of commerce, vanity, or just simple ambition is hardly a new phenomenon and even continues today with the biggest singers of the era getting to play their own track over the closing credits of the latest tentpole feature. This is even more popular in Japan where idol culture dominates the entertainment world and boy bands boys are often top of the list for any going blockbuster (wisely or otherwise). Cycling back to 1955 when the phenomenon was at its heyday all over the world, So Young, So Bright (ジャンケン娘, Janken Musume) is the first of four so called “three girl” (Sannin Musume) musicals which united the three biggest female singers of the post-war era: Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri, and Izumi Yukimura for a music infused comedy caper.

As far as plot goes, it’s actually very simple and yet quite complicated at the same time as highschoolers Yumi (Chiemi Eri) and Ruri (Hibari Misora) end up on a school trip to Kyoto where they fall in a river because they’re laughing so much at their classmates’ excitement at spotting someone filming a jidaigeki on the riverbank (neat cameo from director Toshio Sugie). Breaking off from their group, they take their uniforms off to dry only to be disturbed by a young man who tries to take photographs of them at which point they pretend to be washing some clothes in the river. Later they head to an inn which is owned by a friend of Ruri’s mother (who is also an inn owner and former geisha) where they befriend an apprentice geisha, Piyo (Izumi Yukimura).

Piyo then turns up in Tokyo in a bit of a state as it turns out she will shortly be sold into prostitution! She’s fallen in love with someone from the city who she thinks could save her if only she can find him so the girls set out to help her, except the guy’s name is Saito which is the Smith of Japan. During all of this, Ruri also has a subplot about her long lost father who will shortly be moving abroad and apparently wants to actually meet her, opening lots of old wounds.

So Young, So Bright is not a musical in the classical sense, it’s not integrated, but allows ample space for its singing stars to do their thing. Yumi just loves to sing so she randomly starts singing songs she’s heard everywhere, Piyo sings as a geisha and Ruri is rehearsing for some kind of kabuki style performance she gives alone on stage at the climax of the film.

That aside, the main musical sequence comes towards the end where the three girls go to the theatre together and strangely end up seeing “themselves” performing on stage. It’s a neat kind of fantasy sequence in which each of the girls indulges in a little bit of daydreaming as they imagine themselves as stage stars with Piyo being given the cutest, most MGM style number which is then followed by a number from Yumi entitled “Africa” which is very much of its time…and then you get the elegant number from Ruri which is mostly the English version of La Vie en Rose. They also get a trio number to close the film which takes place entirely on a rollercoaster but celebrates each of their slightly different singing styles.

So Young, So Bright is not intended to be anything other than irrepressibly cheerful fluff (despite containing a subplot about possible forced prostitution), but succeeds in being exactly that. An early colour film from Japan it certainly makes fantastic use of its technicolour swirl to give Hollywood a run for its money in the sophistication of happiness stakes. Hollywood musicals are quite clearly the biggest influence though perhaps more those from the pre-war era even down to the only large scale dance sequence which has a distinct Busby Berkley vibe (even it only lasts twenty seconds or so). The rest of the film is actually quite light on dance but makes sure to showcase the singing talents of each of its leading ladies equally. Strangely innocent, even if darkness lurks around the edges with the betrayed geisha and possible prostitution subplots, So Young, So Bright lives up to its name as a completely charming musical comedy that is perfectly primed to banish even the bluest of blues far into the distance.

These movies are so much fun! No subtitles but here are some clips of the various musical numbers:

Izumi Yukimura’s Cha Cha number:

Chiemi Eri’s Africa number (not very PC by modern standards, just a warning)

Hibari Misora’s take on the English language version of La Vie en Rose

And the finale:

I Want to Be a Shellfish (私は貝になりたい, Shinobu Hashimoto, 1959)

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shellfishAfter Japan was defeated and later occupied by the Americans, there came the painstaking exercise of examining what exactly had happened during the conflict and assessing is who, if anyone, could be held accountable for any wrongdoing. The so called “war criminals” were divided into classes according to the severity of their crimes with Tojo himself at the top who eventually paid with his life. However, many of the men who were given the same Class A rating were just rank and file soldiers who had been “following orders”, often because they feared for their own lives if they refused. The debut directorial effort from writer Shinobu Hashimoto who provided scripts for some of Akira Kurosawa’s most famous works, I Want to be a Shellfish (私は貝になりたい, Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai), examines just one of these tragically absurd cases.

Barber Shimizu has finally started to make headway in his very own shop where he lives happily with his wife and son when he’s unexpectedly drafted into the army towards the end of the war. Unused to heavy physical labour and a fairly gentle man, he doesn’t take well to the soldier’s life and gets himself into trouble with his C/O. Stationed near Tokyo, Shimizu’s squad is charged with searching for a pair of US airmen thought to have bailed out after their plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid over the city. When they eventually find the pilots, both have already died of their injuries.

At this point Shimizu’s captain makes a cruel and rash decision – rather than sending the bodies back to HQ or burying them there, he decides to use them as target practice for his raw recruits. When ordered to pick out the two weakest soldiers, the NCO picks Shimizu and another man, Takita, who are then ordered to bayonet the corpses to prove what fine soldiers they have become. Though they both fail the first time the captain berates them until they finally comply.

The war ends and Shimizu goes home to his family only to receive a knock on the door from the war crimes commission who drag him off to Tokyo for trial. The trial itself is a farce, Shimizu is charged with executing a prisoner of war – the fact the pilots were both dead when found and therefore were never executed and were never even prisoners is never revealed by anyone. Finally classified as a Class A War Criminal, Shimizu is sentenced to death for having stabbed a corpse.

It goes without saying that, yes, terrible crimes were committed during the war and some of them deliberately and wilfully. However, in Shimizu’s case his crime is an absurd one. Though the way in which his superiors have treated the fallen soldiers of their enemies is far from humane, Shimizu has committed no murder and was just following the orders of his superiors. Improper as it may have been, it hardly warrants the loss of his own life and that he’s being placed in the same category as members of execution squads and those who wilfully participated in crimes against civilians is more than a little disproportionate.

Perhaps the most controversial element of the film is that Shimizu seems to have been denied a fair trial. To those who can understand both languages, or even just from the subtitles provided for the translation of the American prosecutor’s questions, it’s obvious that the way in which his questioning is being conducted is far from ideal. The translation gap between the two languages is immense and leads to a series of misunderstandings which in no way aid Shimizu’s case.

It’s also clear that the panel in charge of the trial have very little understanding of how the Japanese military works and how this might differ from American military law. Shimizu is repeatedly questioned about how he feels about the order he was given – a strange question given that the idea of not following an order is not one which immediately presents itself. Shimizu repeats the credo he was taught that an order from his C/O is the same as one coming directly from the Emperor. However, when translated, the prosecutor infers that Shimizu thinks his order came from the Emperor himself and stupidly asks if Shimizu actually met the Emperor in person. Likewise, they ask why he didn’t simply refuse to follow the order and when he replies that he believed he would be shot, they ask why he didn’t ask to be referred to a military court which is just not something that would have been reasonably feasible for a Japanese soldier in this sort of situation.

The fact that the soldiers were already dead to begin with is never even mentioned, by anyone. The highest ranking officer who ordered the search is held responsible even though his orders were to bring the men in alive. Shimizu’s captain has since killed himself, conveniently, leaving everyone else to take the fall for his inhumane decision.

At the end of the film as Shimizu is faced with saying goodbye to a world which has dealt him nothing but hardship other than the wife and son he will be forced to leave behind, Shimizu utters the film’s title. He wishes he were a shellfish buried deep at the bottom of the ocean far from humans and their capacity for cruelty. No poverty, no draft, no war, no absurd trials – free from this world of torment. A lament for the little guy paying the price for world gone mad, I Want to be a Shellfish is a bleak and tragic tale which is filled with universal quality of melancholic absurdity which continues into its heartbreaking final moments.

Bonus trivia – Frankie Sakai (more usually seen as a singer or in comedic roles) also played Shimizu the previous year in an enormously successful TV drama. This story has in fact been filmed several times, most recently as a feature film in 2008 and was inspired by the book by Tetsutaro Kato who was sentenced to death as a war criminal though later had his sentence commuted and was released for “good behaviour” in 1952 (but may not have been quite as innocent as poor old Shimizu).

 

The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly (透明人間と蝿男, Mitsuo Murayama, 1957)

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The Invisible Man Vs the Human FlyWho would win in a fight between The Invisible Man and The Human Fly? Well, when you think about it, the answer’s sort of obvious and how funny it would be to watch probably depends on your ability to detect the facial expressions of The Human Fly, but nevertheless Daiei managed to make an entire film out of this concept which is a sort of late follow-up to their original take on Invisible Man Appears from 1949. Like that film, The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly (透明人間と蝿男, Tomei Ningen to Hae Otoko) also adopts a deadpan, straightforward tone despite its rather ridiculous premise.

Tokyo is being plagued by a series of mysterious murders occurring in broad daylight in which the victim is stabbed through the back piercing the heart yet witnesses report seeing no suspicious activity near the crime scene. Perhaps The Invisible Man did it, hahaha….However, when the man sitting next to the professor in charge of researching the “imperceptibility device” is murdered in an aircraft toilet, the police get wise to a possibly surreal explanation for these bizarre crimes. The only other evidence they have is a connection between a sleazy nightclub owner, a friend of his and one of the murdered men who briefly served together during the war, the fact that one of the victims pointed at the sky before dying, and reports of a strange buzzing sound….

Interestingly, the major viewpoint here is from the policemen investigating the case and their attempts to get their heads around this extremely unusual series of events. As often happens with revisiting a form of technology which has been used for ill in the previous picture, here the “imperceptibility device” becomes a force for good as it might be able to help the powers at be stamp out The Human Fly. This time there’s not so much of the accompanying madness which is caused by going invisible but there’s still a heavy price to be paid as no one’s figured out a way of turning back which doesn’t involve rapid death from cancer immediately afterwards.

By contrast, The Human Fly is born of a man made serum developed by Japanese mad scientists during World War II and brought back by a man who was abandoned on an island by his comrades and subsequently left to take the wrap at a war crimes tribunal. He wants to use the technology to further his own success yet has a minion carrying out most of the dirty work. The Human Fly serum does, apparently, carry a number of psychological side effects including violent impulses, paranoia and addiction.

The special effects are not quite as good as in Invisible Man Appears though the invisible antics are not the focus of the film anyway. Bizarrely, The Human Fly is just a shrunken man who is somehow able to zip about like a regular fly even though he’s still dressed in his normal business suit and keeps his arms rigidly to his sides like some kind of human torpedo. Apparently, the buzzing sound is made because of his being very small (so says science) which gets around the inconvenient truth of him not having any wings or other fly-like characteristics other than the ability of flight.

It’s all very silly, though not quite silly enough in places. For the most part, the film plays out like a regular police procedural with slight noir undertones despite the obvious strangeness of the mysteries at hand. Though there’s obviously something to be made about the origin of the Human Fly serum and the anger of the “war criminal” who feels himself betrayed by his country, it’s a fairly subtle comment on post-war resentment. However, attitudes to the practice of scientific research do seem to have shifted with the researchers investigating the imperceptibility device cast as the good guys (though no particular reason for their work is ever offered) who can be relied upon to help catch the “bad guys” who are making use of “bad technology” to do “bad things”.

A fairly solid B-movie though one which is perhaps a little too po-faced for its genretastic title, The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly is an interesting mix of noir crime thriller with a little science fiction and even a few horror trappings thrown in. Thanks to its straightforward approach it may prove a little dull for genre enthusiasts but does offer its own kind of surreal iconography and it’s difficult to forget the sight of a tiny, angry looking besuited man flying around and committing random crimes while an invisible opponent stalks him from the shadows.

 

Enjo (炎上, Kon Ichikawa, 1958)

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a0212807_23483150Kon Ichikawa turns his unflinching eyes to the hypocrisy of the post-war world and its tormented youth in adapting one of Yukio Mishima’s most acclaimed works, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Inspired by the real life burning of the Kinkaku-ji temple in 1950 by a “disturbed” monk, Enjo (炎上, AKA Conflagration / Flame of Torment) examines the spiritual and moral disintegration of a young man obsessed with beauty but shunned by society because of a disability.

The film begins near its ending as a young boy with a monk’s haircut sits in a police interrogation room. He was found passed out in the woods behind a burning temple with two knife wounds on his chest plus the knife and a packet of matches lying next to him. The police would quite like to know why he, obviously, set fire to one of Japan’s most popular historical monuments, but the boy refuses to speak.

At this point we enter a series of extended flashbacks as the boy, Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), enters the Soen Temple after his father’s death as an apprentice to the head monk there, Tayama, who was a friend of his father’s. The assistant chief monk is unhappy about this as he’s long wanted his own son to be accepted as a novice with an eye to one day inheriting the temple as the current head monk is not married and has no son of his own. When the other monks find out that the reason Goichi rarely speaks is his stammer, they begin to doubt his suitability to become a representative of their organisation.

Having grown up in a temple, Goichi idolised his father and wants nothing other than to become a monk himself. His father also loved the golden temple, “Shukaku-ji” more than anything else in the world and so it has come to symbolise a shining pillar of purity for the young Goichi who will stop at nothing to protect it. Simply being allowed to be near it is enough for him. That the temple survived the wartime air raids and subsequent chaos is nothing short of a miracle, if not proof of the gods’ love for it.

Yet, Goichi burns it down. He destroys this thing that he loved above all else, so why did he do it? The temple is too good for the world, too pure to be permitted to exist. Simply put, we don’t deserve it. One of Goichi’s earliest attempts to protect the sacred environs of the monument sees him physically push a woman away from its doors. The woman, dressed in a very modern style, had been having an argument with a GI and though it originally looks as if Goichi may come to her rescue it’s the temple he runs for. After the woman lands flat on her back, the GI thanks him for saving them “a lot of trouble with the baby”.

After having committed an unintended sin in defending his beloved temple from being defiled by an impure woman, Goichi has the urge to confess but never quite brings himself to do it. This begins to create a rift between himself and his mentor the head priest. Though the priest had been his champion, Goichi always doubted that he really saw him as a possible successor because of his stammer and only now realises that the priest has lost faith in him because of his cowardliness in not informing him of the incident with woman outside Shukaku-ji. After this slight the priest goes on supporting Goichi but not with the same warmth as before and Goichi eventually comes to resent him.

The priest has feet of clay – though it’s not unusual for priests to marry and have families, Tayama has nominally dedicated himself to the temple only, leaving himself with a problem as to its succession. However, Goichi discovers that the priest has a mistress in one of the most popular geisha houses in Kyoto. The monks are some of the wealthiest people around thanks to pimping out Shukaku-ji as a major tourist attraction and Tayama has already forgotten himself, becoming lost in the “worldliness” necessary to manage a religious establishment which is actually a lucrative business enterprise. The temple is itself defiled, prostituted, by the very people who are supposed to be protecting it and the proceeds fed back into funding an “immoral” lifestyle for its “CEO”.

This hypocrisy adds to the injustice dealt Goichi by the uncharitable nature of the monks who also, like just about everyone else, shun him because of his stammer. Though he never stammers reading the sutras and can even speak English plainly, his lifelong stutter has left him reluctant to speak and he finds only one friend at the temple. Later he meets another bad tempered man with a lame leg and the two develop an odd bond based on their shared “deformities”. Kashiwagi (Tatsuya Nakadai) is at odds with the world and encourages Goichi further onto the course of mistaken anger born of insecurity. He urges Goichi to test Tayama’s true virtue by constantly provoking him which only leads to a further fall in Goichi’s fortunes. However, Kashiwagi is also shown up for a hypocrite who exploits other people’s reactions to his disability for his own advantage.

All of Goichi’s idols fall. His parents – his mother an adulteress and his father a sickly heartbroken monk, his mentor a lecherous hypocrite and his friend a self hating coward. The world he saw in Shukaku-ji can never exist, humans are fallible and always will be including Goichi himself who is tormented by dark thoughts. An idealistic absolutist, the existence of Shukaku-ji in this imperfect world becomes to much for him to bear.

Ichikawa tells his story in a fractured, dreamlike way full of gentle dissolves as one period segues into another without warning. Goichi’s memories become more disparate and keenly focussed at the same time as his spiritual health deteriorates. Ichikawa tries to capture some of Goichi’s inner claustrophobia through the oppressive architecture of the temple environment but can’t get close to the pervading sense of dread in Mishima’s novel. Enjo is the dissection of one man’s self immolation in the fire of his own spiritual disintegration but is also a condemnation of the corrupting modern world which enables such pollution to take place and its tale of the doomed innocence of the idealist is one which is retold throughout history.

I can’t seem to find any video clips of this film, but as a side note 炎上 is current Japanese netslang for a flamewar so I did find a bunch of other “interesting” stuff.

Here’s a short video featuring clips from several of Ichikawa’s films including Enjo which you’ll be able to spot what with the temple on fire and everything…

A Japanese Tragedy (日本の悲劇, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1953)

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A Japanese Tragedy 1A Japanese tragedy, or the tragedy of Japan? In Kinoshita’s mind, there was no greater tragedy than the war itself though perhaps what came after was little better. Made only eight years after Japan’s defeat, Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1953 film A Japanese Tragedy (日本の悲劇, Nihon no Higeki) is the story of a woman who sacrificed everything it was possible to sacrifice to keep her children safe, well fed and to invest some kind of hope in a better future for them. However, when you’ve had to go to such lengths to merely to stay alive, you may find that afterwards there’s only shame and recrimination from those who ought to be most grateful.

After opening with a series of genuine newsreel segments overlaid with newspaper clippings which tell of nothing other than crime, corruption and suicides, Kinoshita shifts focus to our ordinary mother, Haruko, currently working in an inn. Her son, Seiichi, has something he wants to tell her and will be staying with his sister, Utako, if she’d care to call. Neither of the children seems very excited about seeing their mother and, in fact, Seiichi’s news is that he wants to be adopted into a wealthy medical family so he can eventually take over their hospital. Utako is studying dressmaking and learning English but has also developed an attraction to her married English teacher which is threatening to develop into quite a difficult situation.

Kinoshita makes it plain that everybody suffered during the war which generally brought out the worst in people and even afterwards it was every man for himself as each tried desperately to climb out of the deepening hole that was Japan’s wartime defeat. Haruko lost her husband in the conflict, leaving her alone with two young children to feed and no one to help her. She did what she had to do whether that was a spot of black-marketeering, hoarding, or even casual prostitution but she put her children first every time. Unfortunately, she also falls for some bad self serving advice from her brother-in-law who offers to take over her husband’s land and look after the children while she earns more money out of town. Of course, he didn’t exactly keep his promises and both of the children suffered as a result.

Far from feeling grateful for their mother’s sacrifice, what the children feel is a mixture of shame and resentment. They’re embarrassed by their mother’s hardline personality and rural earthiness which no longer match their postwar upwardly mobile aspirations and force them to remember the unpleasantness of their upbringing. Seiichi is particularly disgusted by his mother’s having prostituted herself, branding her a “loose woman” and calling into question her character even before the disruptive effects of the war. Utako suffered a far greater betrayal at the hands of her relatives which has coloured her entire world view and left her with nothing but lingering resentment towards the mother who placed her in this situation.

Kinoshita intercuts the present day action with completely silent scenes of the family escaping from the military police, or memories of the various traumas each of the family members encountered in the chaotic period immediately after the end of the war. We see them travel from the warm letters sent by the children to their mother which lament the way their aunt and uncle are treating them to the outright hostility of the contemporary era. Haruko may not be the easiest of women, she’s certainly had a difficult life by any standards and it’s understandable why the relationship with her children might be strained, but in this case blood is not enough to overcome all the years of hardship and neither Seiichi nor Utako is willing to fulfil their filial obligations towards their mother.

Haruko substitutes the relationship she’s missing with her own children by offering maternal advice to the chef who works in her inn and a sad wandering guitarist who often comes by to serenade the guests. Not much older than her own son, the guitarist also has a mother in the country whom he rarely sees – Haruko gives him some money that he tearfully promises to use to send his mother a present, though he confesses at the end of the film that he drank it himself in the end. He feels guilty about it and he’s moved by Haruko’s kindness towards him but in the end he’s forgotten his own mother too and even if he isn’t treating her with the same level of disdain that Seiichi and Utako display for Haruko, he isn’t doing much better in the filial piety stakes.

An extended metaphor with a series of tightly packed layers, A Japanese Tragedy is a lament for a homeland that’s lost its way. Haruko, like the idealised mother, has given her own life in sacrifice for those of her children only to find that her children disown her for it. Everything she has ever done, good and bad, has been in their name yet they refuse even to acknowledge her suffering but rather apportion blame for their own hardships. Kinoshita litters Haruko’s story with news reports bearing out the depths to which the country has fallen – corrupt politicians, rioting, violence on the streets and mothers who commit suicide taking their children with them. At a moment near the end of the film, Haruko remains motionless on the train station steps as a crowd of passengers surges past her. Left alone, uncertain, and believing herself to have lost the only thing that has ever mattered to her, Haruko becomes a casualty of a society that is so intent on marching forward that it’s lost sight of where it’s going. An enraged state of the nation address, this bleak and tragic tale is nevertheless filled with genuine human feeling and naturalistic detail which only deepen the impact of the desperately sad ending.

Opening sequence of the film:

Reviewed at the 2016 Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, ICA 7th February 2016.

 

Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1

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nikkatsudg_av037Review of Arrow’s Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 1 first published on UK Anime Network.

“Diamond Guys” is the name given to the top line of A-list stars at Japan’s oldest film studio Nikkatsu during their period of relaunching themselves as a major production house during the 1950s. At this time, Japanese studios, like their Hollywood counterparts, worked largely on a star system where they held a number of actors and actresses under contract and slotted them into their productions as and where they saw fit. Of the three stars in these pictures, Yujiro Ishihara perhaps burned brightest as a James Dean style apathetic hero and icon of the “sun tribe” era. Hideaki Nitani ultimately carved a niche for himself as a second lead rather than in starring roles and is a little more on the soulful side than the other guys. Akira Kobayashi who’s still fairly young here is probably the most familiar to overseas audiences later starring in a number of gangster pictures including Arrow’s previous releases Retaliation and the Battles Against Honour and Humanity series.

The first film included in the set, Voice Without a Shadow, is a notable inclusion as it’s a little seen, early effort from the notorious master of the surreal, Seijun Suzuki. In a significantly restrained mood here, Suzuki adapts a Seicho Matsumoto short story with noirish overtones as a telephone switchboard operator accidentally connects a wrong number and unwittingly hears the voice of a murderer at a crime scene. Hideaki Nitani plays a conflicted reporter who’s fallen in love with the switchboard operator who is, alas, already engaged. Three years later she hears the voice again in a gangster her husband unwisely becomes involved with only to have him killed and her husband become the prime suspect.

Film number two, Red Pier, comes from Toshio Masuda and stars pinup of the day Yujiro Ishihara in a characteristically cheeky, nihilistic gangster role. Dressed in a bright white suit and sunglasses, “Jiro the Lefty” is a petty yakuza street kid who found a home in a gang but dreams of a better life somewhere else. After witnessing the strange death of a potential target who gets crushed by a crane at the docks, Jiro ends up meeting the man’s sister and, of course, falls for her. Unfortunately, just about everyone now has it in for Jiro and his happily ever after seems very far off indeed.

The Rambling Guitarist, by contrast, is the only film in the collection to be filmed in colour but makes fantastic use of its super bright, psychedelic look. Starring Akira Kobayashi as a drifter with a guitar, the film starts out like a western but ends as a yakuza pic with a little youth drama thrown in for good measure. It’s fighting, music, and gunplay with Jo Shishido lending grinning support as a late addition hitman.

In some senses each of these films was built around its star – men want to be them, women want to be with them, you get the picture. The Rambling Guitarist is sort of the odd one out here as it’s of a slightly different strand than the other two with a lighter emphasis on crime and a shift from noir to western in terms of its overseas influences. Both Voice Without a Shadow and Red Pier lean much more towards film noir with Red Pier leaning a little more towards Europe than America. That said, The Rambling Guitarist is perhaps the weakest film on offer simply because of its up to the moment youth orientation which leaves it feeling a little more dated than the other two which can rely on their more classical style to find a modern appeal.

Each of these little seen gems would have been worthy of a solo buy in any case but finding them all offered in this fantastic new package from Arrow is a real treat. Each offered in stunning HD re-masters on blu-ray, even if they show their age in a couple of places the transfers are particularly fine and are likely to be the best these films will ever look. The Nikkatsu films from this era offered crowd pleasing thrills and good looking actors, but they were often also made by interesting directors who injected a little of their own individual, often youthful, flair to lift them well above the generic genre movies also on offer. That isn’t to say that each of their pictures was a smash hit, but the three on offer as part of this set are certainly each worthy of consideration even if for quite different reasons and if the included trailers for Vol. 2 are anything to go by we have even more undiscovered gems to look forward to in the future!

Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 1 is out now on dual format DVD/blu-ray in the UK and USA courtesy of Arrow.

 

The Rambling Guitarist (ギターを持った渡り鳥, Buichi Saito, 1959)

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60030340Sometimes, just like an aimless drifter wandering into town, you feel as if you’ve come in during the second reel and missed some vital piece of information leaving you feeling a little at odds with the current situation. So it is with Buichi Saito’s The Rambling Guitarist (ギターを持った渡り鳥, Guitar wo Motta Wataridori) which is, apparently, the first film in a series though feels a little more like the second.

The film begins with a scene straight out of a classic western as the titular guitar toting wanderer, Taki (played by rising Nikkatsu star of the time Akira Kobayashi looking very fresh faced indeed), is fast asleep on the back of a cart travelling through an arid landscape with a mountain looming in the background before being woken by the driver who points him towards the nearest town. Having left the dry expanses on foot, Taki hasn’t been in Hakodate for long before he’s wrecked a local drinking establishment in a two on one bar brawl with a couple of drunken foreign sailors who were hassling the other musicians. This brings him to the notice of the crime kingpin Akitsu who offers him a job but Taki doesn’t like to linger and this kind of work’s not his thing so he passes. That is until a chance encounter with Akitsu’s pretty young daughter leads to a change of heart…

Akira Kobayashi went on to become one of the studio’s biggest action stars but here he’s every inch the pretty boy in a Brando-esque leather jacket and with a cooler than cool devil may care approach to life. The very epitome of the kind of pin-up star these films were created to sell, Taki is a noble, broken hearted drifter mournfully strumming along on his ever present guitar whenever the opportunity presents itself. Appealing to the rebellious side of post-war youth but still possessing a moral centre which places him on the side of right, Taki is the kind of youth hero you can still take home to mama.

Post set-up, The Rambling Guitarist drops most of its western tropes pretty quickly and falls back into a standard youth crime drama mould as Taki ends up joining the Akitsu gang who have a plan to build an amusement park on the quiet edge of the island to pull in a bit more tourist money. The snag is, there’s a small house and fishing company based there that they need to take out – the owners have a loan and are already in debt so it shouldn’t be too hard but Akitsu has neglected to mention that the house belongs to his sister (and her husband whom he doesn’t like very much).

Just when you thought everything was about to settle down, an old “friend” emerges from underneath a raincoat in the form of “Killer George” played by fellow Nikkatsu rising star, Jo Shishido. It’s from here on that we start to piece together some of Taki’s previous life and the reason he’s on this seemingly endless path of wandering from to place to place with no clear aim in sight. Things start to take a more generic turn as Taki and George dance around each other a little bit with Akitsu fuelling the fire by plotting behind both of their backs from the shadows. It’s a conventional narrative but acquits itself well enough.

Like the other films of the period, The Rambling Guitarist is built of bright, colourful and above all youthful fun. Consequently it has an energetic, freewheeling atmosphere coupled with a mildly nihilistic bent designed to appeal to the youth of the time. Aside from having some of the least realistic fight choreography ever committed to celluloid (that first bar brawl scene has some real howlers), The Rambling Guitarist proves an enjoyable embodiment of its genre but ultimately fails to build up the kind of emotional investment that would earn it a higher place on the list. A little bit disposable, perhaps, but nevertheless fun The Rambling Guitarist does at least leave you wanting to wander off and find your way to The Rambling Guitarist 2.

The Rambling Guitarist is the third (and final 😦 ) film included in Arrow’s Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1 collection.

Red Pier (赤い波止場, Toshio Masuda, 1958)

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Snapshot-2016-01-24 at 11_01_43 PM-1747507265Loosely inspired by Julian Duvivier’s 1937 gangster movie Pépé le Moko, Toshio Masuda’s Red Pier (赤い波止場, Akai Hatoba) was designed as a vehicle for Nikkatsu’s rising star of the time, Yujiro Ishihara – later to become the icon of the Sun Tribe generation. On paper it sounds like a fairly conventional plot – young turk of a gangster comes to town to off a guy, sees said guy killed in an “accident”, and shrugs it off as one of life’s little ironies only to accidentally become acquainted with and fall head over heals for the dead guy’s sister. So far, so film noir yet Masuda adds enough of his own characteristic touches to keep things interesting.

“Jiro the Lefty” (Yujiro Ishihara) is a sharp looking petty yakuza type in a bright white suit and sunglasses. Another of Japan’s post-war abandoned street kids, he found a home in a gang and has never known anything one could call a “normal” way of life. Other than his obvious talent with a gun, he has a cheerful and ironic personality that has him even almost respected by the police and is generally well liked in the area.

Early on Jiro rescues a little boy from almost being hit by a car and later when playing the harmonica for him gets hit by a thunderbolt of love when catching sight of the boy’s aunt, Keiko (Mie Kitahara). This causes him several problems at once: to begin with, she’s the sister of the guy he saw get hit by a crane and she doesn’t seem to know her brother was a gangster, two – Keiko is obviously of a much higher social class and a little out of his reach even if he managed to go straight, three – he can’t go straight, he doesn’t know how to do anything else, four – Mami, his current nightclub dancer “girlfriend” who’s invested a little more in the relationship than he has. Actually this is only the start of a long list of problems Jiro has to deal with, he just doesn’t know about them yet.

The story is set around the docks of Kobe where the living is hard and life is cheap. The local policeman is a fairly laid-back, ironic chap who’s made an odd sort of friendship with Jiro wherein he doesn’t really want to see anything too bad happen to him. He can see this thing with Keiko is not a very good idea and is constantly lurking in the shadows trying to control the situation as much as he can. Jiro, doesn’t know it yet but his own guys are out to get him too and after one of his sworn brothers ends up paying the price for Jiro’s rising profile in the yakuza world, he finds himself on the run from pretty much everyone.

This sounds like quite a complicated set up but Masuda manages to martial everything into a coherent order and even adds a hearty dose of realistic emotion too. As far as the aesthetic goes, Masuda takes his cues from American film noir with harsh lighting and canted angles all employed to show us the crookedness of this underground world but he also makes sure to add occasional touches of artistic flair such as the light bouncing off Jiro’s sunglasses during a night time cab ride or the sheer shock on Ishihara’s face as he first sees Keiko framed against the bright sunshine of Kobe’s harbour.

The too noble for his own good gangster who wants to go straight but knows he has a crooked heart – it’s an old story, but a good one. Red Pier pushes a lot of these ideas to the max but handles them well and adds a traditional “crime doesn’t pay” ending which is both endlessly sad and completely appropriate at the same time. You can’t help feel for Jiro and his small scale existential crisis in which the reluctant gangster wants to jump ship for more peaceful climes but can’t for both personal and societal reasons. Red Pier may not be the best Masuda/Ishihara collaboration but it is certainly an excellent example of everything its genre has to offer.

Red Pier is the Second film included in Arrow’s Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1 collection.

Voice Without a Shadow (影なき声, Seijun Suzuki, 1958)

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Snapshot-2016-01-24 at 10_45_06 PM-571365520
Make friends with this Oni mask – you will be seeing a lot of him throughout the film.

Seijun Suzuki might be best remembered for his surrealist pop art masterpieces from the late sixties or his even less comprehensible art films which followed his return to directing after settling his dispute with Nikkatsu, but everyone’s got to start somewhere and it comes as something of a relief to know that Suzuki was perfectly capable of making a straightforward movie if he wanted to. Voice Without a Shadow (影なき声, Kagenaki Koe) is exactly what it sounds like – a fifties style, US inspired noir however, Suzuki adds his usual flourishes and manages to wrong foot us pretty much the whole way through so that we never end up where we thought it was that we were going.

To begin with, our story is fairly straightforward. Reporter Ishikawa (Hideaki Nitani) provides our film noir style voice over as switchboard operator Asako (Yoko Minamida) accidentally dials a wrong number only have it picked up by a strange man who tells her she’s rung a crematorium then laughs hysterically. It turns out that the number was actually for a pawn shop which was in the process of being knocked over and the owner killed – Asako heard the perpetrator’s voice and thanks to her switchboard experience isn’t going to forget it. Ishikawa grows closer to Asako as the case becomes a media sensation but backs off after learning she’s already engaged.

Three years later Asako hears the voice again – a friend of her husband’s who keeps co-opting their living room for mahjong games that go on for days and cost everyone but him a lot of money. Before long Hamazaki (Jo Shishido) is found dead and Asako’s husband is the prime suspect but did he really do it? And if he didn’t, does Ishikawa really want to find out who did?

As you can see it’s a story that wouldn’t be out of place in any B movie noir from the fifties and the telephone set up is even a little reminiscent of Sorry, Wrong Number (though that film has a very different conclusion indeed). Based on a short story by Seicho Matsumoto, Voice, Voice Without a Shadow is full of the classic play of light and shadow that characterises the best film noir and the mood is ably supported by a suitably jazzy score from Hikaru Hayashi. If there’s a criticism to be made in this area, it’s that Nitani’s Ishikawa is a little too nice and pure hearted in comparison to the broken hearted heroes from the detective serials. He seems content to try and help Asako whilst uncovering the truth even if it ends up costing him in the end.

Although Asako herself is technically the leading character she quickly gets relegated to a more conventional woman in peril role. She is the one who recognises Hamazaki’s voice and the only clue linking him to the pawn shop murder three years ago but, while he’s alive anyway, Hamazaki is more interested in having fun terrorising everyone rather than trying to rub her out. In fact, the sudden demise of Hamazaki, played by an extremely young Jo Shishido, is one of the most surprising things about the film in which you’d expect him to remain the central antagonist right up until the grand finale.

Voice Without a Shadow is then a fairly conventional, noir inflected B movie which wears its Hollywood influences on its sleeve. However, there are glimpses of Suzuki’s individual style leaking through such as in his occasional and surprising use of double exposure, innovative composition and other modernist techniques which all help to lift the rather workmanlike script onto another level. In someways, it’s all a little too nice – even Hamazaki’s nasty lowlife activities are neatly skirted around almost like a film noir that’s been through a car wash though its strange pleasantness also has a nicely refreshing quality.

A minor film from the master of the surreal then, but an interesting one none the less. The mystery element proves satisfying even if it could do with a little more dirt under its fingernails and the committed performances also do their bit to enhance the mood. A prime example of its genre, Voice Without a Shadow is a notably restrained entry in Suzuki’s back catalogue but its classical style mixed with an offbeat, absurdist undercurrent make it one worth seeking out.

Voice Without a Shadow is the first film included in Arrow’s Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1 collection.

 

Kisses (くちづけ, Yasuzo Masumura, 1957)

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tumblr_nwj79ycwjz1tvmqcgo1_500The debut film from Yasuzo Masumura, Kisses (くちづけ, Kuchizuke) takes your typical teen love story but strips it of the nihilism and desperation typical of its era. Much more hopeful in terms of tone than its precursor and genre setter Crazed Fruit, or the even grimmer The Warped Ones, Kisses harks back to the more to wistful French New Wave romance (though predating it ever so slightly) as the two youngsters bond through their mutual misfortunes.

The film begins as Kinichi and Akiko experience a meet cute whilst visiting their respective fathers who’ve both landed up in gaol. Kinichi’s dad is a politician who’s been accused of “electoral fraud” which he swears is some kind of plot (even though this is the third time he’s been accused of it) whereas Akiko’s father is a government official who’s embezzled a large sum of money in an act of desperation to pay for her mother’s medical treatment. Just as Kinichi is leaving the prison, Akiko is getting into a situation with the rather rude receptionist because she owes something for her father’s room and board. Kinichi becomes offended on Akiko’s behalf and plonks down more than enough money alongside a few choice words for the lady on the counter before flouncing out. Akiko chases after him with his change even though he tells her to get lost in no uncertain terms. Eventually the two end up spending the day together though things turn a little sour towards the end. In this unlucky world, can two crazy kids ever make it work?

In essence, Kisses is an innocent film. Though there may be a few hints of darkness lurking around the edges, its tone is more or less cheerful and fuelled by the idealism of youth. Both Kinichi and Akiko are realists, they’re both older than their years, put-upon and a little desperate but also a little naive. Kinichi’s grumpy and sullen, perhaps nursing a wound from his mother walking out on him. Even when he asks her for the money to bail his father out of gaol she tells him to grow up before treating him like a child by declaring that he himself is collateral on the loan. Akiko’s mother is hospitalised with TB – the misfortune that’s had her father reduced to this shaming state of affairs. To make matters worse it’s not as if she can even tell her mother why her father hasn’t visited for a couple of weeks or explain why the nurse was complaining that their insurance has expired. Her father is also in poor health and likely will not cope very well with remaining in prison hence why she (briefly) considers becoming someone’s mistress or going on a date with a dangerous and unpleasant man to get the money to bail him out.

In any other seishun eiga this situation would be a recipe for a disaster, but somehow it rescues itself from the brink of despair and becomes almost more of salty rom-com than anything else. After the initial cute sea-side and roller skating date, there are crossed wires, mislaid messages and a last minute dash to work out a forgotten address but the film never loses its youthful energy and guileless wit. The world outside might be cruel, but in here it’s just normal, and if a boy and a girl want to blow some time at the races or the beach, who can blame them. They’re young, they’re kind of unhappy but they’ll figure it out and probably be OK which is a lot more than you can say for the usual protagonists of these kinds of film.

Kisses doesn’t have the searing, angry eyes of Masumura’s later work. Yes there is dissatisfaction with the world as it is, but also hope and acceptance, rather than an attempt at rebellion. Neither of the two young lovers is trying to change the world. Forced to be older than they are, both are savvy and realistic but not quite old enough to be fearful or self-centred. Full of youthful nonchalance, Kisses is a tale of innocent romance which is only improved by its layer of ironic whimsy.

Kisses is available with English subtitles on R2 UK DVD from Yume Pictures.

The only (short) clip I could find only has Russian subs…but it’s of a song which is very pretty.