criterionforum.org

ECLIPSE SERIES 17: NIKKATSU NOIR

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2293/NikkatsuNoir_w100.jpg[/img]

From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, wild, idiosyncratic crime movies were the brutal and boisterous business of Nikkatsu, the oldest film studio in Japan. In an effort to attract youthful audiences growing increasingly accustomed to American and French big-screen imports, Nikkatsu began producing action potboilers (mukokuseki akushun, or borderless action) modeled on the western, comedy, gangster, and teen-rebel genres. This bruised and bloody collection represents a standout cross section of the nimble nasties Nikkatsu had to offer, from such prominent, stylistically daring directors as Seijun Suzuki, Toshio Masuda, and Takashi Nomura.

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/product_images/776/Nikkatsu_IAmWaiting_348x490_w100.jpg[/img]

I Am Waiting

Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1957

In Koreyoshi Kurahara’s directorial debut, rebel matinee idol Yujiro Ishihara stars as a former boxer working as a restaurant manager, who saves a beautiful, suicidal club hostess (Mie Kitahara) trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/product_images/779/Nikkatsu_RustyKnife_348x490_w100.jpg[/img]

Rusty Knife

Toshio Masuda, 1958

In Toshio Masuda’s smash Rusty Knife, Yujiro Ishihara and fellow top Nikkatsu star Akira Kobayashi play former hoodlums trying to leave behind a life of crime, but their past comes back to haunt them when the authorities seek them out as murder witnesses.

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/product_images/782/Nikkatsu_TakeAim_348x490_w100.jpg[/img]

Take Aim at the Police Van

Seijun Suzuki, 1960

At the beginning of Seijun Suzuki’s taut and twisty whodunit, a prison truck is attacked and a convict inside is murdered. The penitentiary warden on duty, Daijiro (Michitaro Mizushima), is accused of negligence and suspended, only to take it upon himself to track down the killers.

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/product_images/785/Nikkatsu_CruelGunStory_348x490_w100.jpg[/img]

Cruel Gun Story

Takumi Furukawa, 1964

Fresh out of the slammer, Togawa (Branded to Kill's Joe Shishido) has no chance to go straight because he is immediately coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing the heist of an armored car carrying racetrack receipts.

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/product_images/788/Nikkatsu_AColtIs_348x490_w100.jpg[/img]

A Colt Is My Passport

Takashi Nomura, 1967

One of Japanese cinema’s supreme emulations of American noir, Takashi Nomura’s A Colt Is My Passport is a down-and-dirty but gorgeously photographed yakuza film starring Joe Shishido as a hard-boiled hit man caught between rival gangs.

Oh wow, I was not expecting this. Great news!

What with the upcoming releases of Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!, A Tale of Sorrow and now news of this, Suzuki fans are really being spoilt this year!

The other films are totally unheard of for me, so this should make for great surprise viewing throughout.

Just saw over a week ago I am Waiting and A Colt is My Passport at the Jinbocho Theater in Tokyo (without subtitles). Having seen nearly a dozen other Kurahara films last November at the National Film Archives(Tokyo) retrospective (all with English subs), I would have preferred if the set indcluded instead one of Kurahara's other noirish films; Road to Hell, Intimidation, or The Third Dead Angle. Of the films from that retrospective my least favorite by far also starred Yujiro Ishihara.

I've never been exposed to the whole Nikkatsu ethos here....but will be with Kino's 3 Seconds Before Explosion, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards and this box set. What are we looking forward to? Sort of like Suzuki ala Branded to Kill/Tokyo Drifter? Or are these less off the wall than those?

I've only just got around to picking up a copy of No Borders, No Limits, so this is great news! (By the way at the bottom of that page is a link to a video from the first US screening of A Colt Is My Passport introduced by Mark Schilling and a Q&A. It's pretty muffled though). Here is the Midnight Eye review for A Colt Is My Passport.

Hopefully the least we can expect from this box set is that it will help to place Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill in context, since we'll see some of the range of films Nikkatsu produced beyond the notorious, career ending entries from Suzuki.

A very exciting release that finally expands the scope of the Eclipse line beyond auteur-themed sets. Hopefully there's been enough water under the bridge in the last few years to forestall a return to the hoary "too much Suzuki" arguments!

zedz wrote:Hopefully there's been enough water under the bridge in the last few years to forestall a return to the hoary "too much Suzuki" arguments!

Especially since we still need Carmen!

I know Colt... was singled out as the standout, but is this the crème de la crème of the retrospective, or should we be patiently waiting the succeding boxsets?

colinr0380 wrote: Hopefully the least we can expect from this box set is that it will help to place Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill in context, since we'll see some of the range of films Nikkatsu produced beyond the notorious, career ending entries from Suzuki.

Did they really kill off his career? Sadly I haven't gotten around to watching them yet, but from I've heard they may be strange but aren't bad by any means.

knives wrote:

colinr0380 wrote:Hopefully the least we can expect from this box set is that it will help to place Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill in context, since we'll see some of the range of films Nikkatsu produced beyond the notorious, career ending entries from Suzuki.

Did they really kill off his career? S

No, Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill are hardly bad movies. I believe what colin0380 was referring to was those two films spelled the end of Suzuki's career at the studio...and I may have gotten that wrong, so I'm sure the more knowledgeable here will correct me.

Sorry, I should have been more accurate and said the ending of Suzuki's career at Nikkatsu! It also was not meant to reflect badly on the films themselves - films can be 'career ending' but not necessarily bad in themselves! Branded To Kill would seem to be the furthest point that these films could go, and very much reliant on an audience familiar with well worn conventions of the genre, which is why it would be particularly interesting to see how another director was handling the same basic material at around the same time as well as just more films from the era in general.

I still wonder at just what Suzuki as a contract director could have done with Roman Porno films if he had still been at Nikkatsu after 1971 though. It seems that as long as the required nudity levels were reached, filmmakers were within reason relatively free to do what they wanted with the less important elements like plot and stylistics!

colinr0380 wrote:I still wonder at just what Suzuki as a contract director could have done with Roman Porno films if he had still been at Nikkatsu after 1971 though. It seems that as long as the required nudity levels were reached, filmmakers were within reason relatively free to do what they wanted with the less important elements like plot and stylistics!

While I don't know enough about the movement to make claims of influence, if the wild stylization of a masterpiece like Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41 isn't influenced by Suzuki, its at least born of the same spirit. The entire "exploitative" turn the industry took in the early 70s almost seems like a vindication of everything Suzuki was doing at Nikkatsu when you look at the visual imagination poured into films which would have been the grindhouse trash of the West. (Of course, you probably already know this).

Tribe wrote:I've never been exposed to the whole Nikkatsu ethos here....but will be with Kino's 3 Seconds Before Explosion, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards and this box set. What are we looking forward to? Sort of like Suzuki ala Branded to Kill/Tokyo Drifter? Or are these less off the wall than those?

Not having seen three of the films on this upcoming set I cannot fully answer your question, but I am Waiting is certainly not off the wall. It's any early Yujiro Ishihara/Mie Kitahara film with the focus on these two stars.

colinr0380 wrote:Sorry, I should have been more accurate and said the ending of Suzuki's career at Nikkatsu! It also was not meant to reflect badly on the films themselves - films can be 'career ending' but not necessarily bad in themselves! Branded To Kill would seem to be the furthest point that these films could go, and very much reliant on an audience familiar with well worn conventions of the genre, which is why it would be particularly interesting to see how another director was handling the same basic material at around the same time as well as just more films from the era in general.

I didn't mean to suggest that you thought they were bad. I meant career killer-->viewed as bad by the public. I'm glad they put this set out then since it sounds like they will make me appreciate those films more when I finally get to them.

I glad they finally got around to a themed set (now if they'd only do some Czech New Wave!). Although I haven't seen them, the Korda set seems to be a low-water mark for the Eclipse line, and it was time to get away from the auteur sets, even if only for a while. (Yes, I know Korda wasn't an "auteur," but the set's still based on his production of the films.) I've been watching a lot of noir lately (based on members' recommendations) and enjoying the hell out of it, so this set looks like a blind buy.

jbeall wrote: I've been watching a lot of noir lately (based on members' recommendations) and enjoying the hell out of it, so this set looks like a blind buy.

Ditto for me, mostly based on the other Suzukis I own. What are some of the other noirs you've been watching, jbeall?

Now admittedly I haven't seen any of the movies in this set...but based on the Nikkatsu I've seen, I'd wager these are hardly noir films in the classic sense, right?

Oooh..according to this Outcast Cinema blog post Cruel Gun Story is inspired by The Killing!

Preface: I haven't seen any of these. Evidently only a couple of them have been seen outside of Japan -- Rusty Knife and Colt having screened in the Nikkatsu Action retro. Even Take Aim never made any international Suzuki retros. That said, I can share a little background:

I Am Waiting

Kurahara was more straightlaced than Suzuki and a better earner; though this would have been a B film, being his debut. It's success disseminated its noir flavour into many subsequent Nikkatsu flicks. He also made two weirder films that were in the Schilling retro, The Warped Ones, which I think was slightly more favourably received than Colt, and Glass Johnny: Look Like a Beast, the La Strada rip-off. Post-Nikkatsu he did very well and went on to make a number of family-friendly animal pictures including Antarctica, which was remade by Disney as Eight Below.

Yujiro Ishihara, the older brother in Crazed Fruit and real life brother of writer-slash-current Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, was the Japanese hybrid Elvis-James Dean (Nikkatsu had another Japanese James Dean at the same time who even died in a road accident in his early 20s, albeit a go-kart rather than a Porsche.) Anyway, he was bigger than Mifune through the 1960s. Mie Kitahara made 24 movies with him, then the two got married and she retired. He also went on to a singing career -- earning the Elvis comparison -- and they also did the young vs. old stamp thing.



Rusty Knife

This is Toshio Masuda's third film and first major hit, reaching no. 7 at the domestic box office. It's also his first paring with Ishihara with whom he made 25 films, bringing to mind Kurosawa and Mifune or a Suzuki-Shishido analogy. The film is also credited as Akira Kobayashi, of the HVe Suzukis, star turn, as well as his first paring with Ishihara. Kobayashi became the heir apparent to Ishihara's throne at the top of the Diamond Line (Nikkatsu branded it's top male stars as their Diamond Line.) He also went on to a singing career and has also been described as a Japanese Elvis.

Masuda also made Red Quay, Red Handkerchief and Gangster VIP from the retro and Velvet Hustler which was an HVe VHS. He was Nikkatsu's top earner and maintained his status as box office boffo throughout his career. He was the guy who replaced Kurosawa on Tora! Tora! Tora! -- Fukasaku seems to get all the credit because we actually know who he is over here but Masuda only brought him on board to help out with 2nd unit stuff mostly. A career long Japanese language book was published on him a few years ago which claims he's made more top 10 films than any other Japanese director except one (I was never able to track down who that was. I assumed Miyazaki) and it seems unlikely the book will ever be translated. Same with the career spanning Suzuki book. But this guy's alive and well and it'd be great to see Criterion do an interview with him at least. I've been thinking of him as Bizarro Suzuki, in a good way. Lastly -- spoiler alert -- this film apparently ends with dueling dump trucks.

Take Aim at the Police Van

This was three years before Suzuki's breakthrough (Youth of the Beast or The Bastard, depending on who you ask.) As far as I can tell the only mention of this film in North America before now is a brief synopsis in Asian Cult Cinema magazine 10 years ago and a short paragraph in Chris D.'s book. Suzuki had a reputation for taught thrillers in his early career and this sounds like no exception. Chris D. describes it as a "nightmarish gauntlet ... of foot-chases, red herrings, merciless beatings and near-miss shootings." Most Japanese studio products were written by committee, with one guy getting the screen credit, and Suzuki began co-writing his films with this one and they became more stylized from this point. Cool title too, I think it'd be my favourite if you exclude all the ones with "Bastard" in them.

Cruel Gun Story

Takumi Furukawa is usually only mentioned as the director of the first Sun Tribe film, Season of the Sun, in which Ishihara was cast in a bit part and discovered. It's generally considered in the top three Sun Tribe films but the weakest of those three, after Crazed Fruit and Kon Ichikawa's Punishment Room. Shilling doesn't mention Gun Story in his book but, as colinr mentioned, Marc Walkow describes it as distinctly Kubrick's The Killingish. Shishido was a second teir Diamond Line star but of course he's better known than the A-listers outside of Japan due to his work in Mystery Science Theater 3000's Fugitive Alien and some other stuff.

A Colt Is My Passport

I guess I don't have to say much here, good word of mouth from the retro. The pre-Branded to Kill Branded to Killish one. One of Shishido's first starring roles which Schilling marks as a career high point with Slaughter Gun and Branded -- they also form a loose trilogy according to Chris D. Also a personal favourite of Shishido himself and Yasuharu Hasebe who directed Slaughter Gun and Black Tight Killers. It sounds like some of the stuff the Midnight Eye guys say Passport did before Branded Suzuki had already done in Take Aim, so, we will see how prophetic it was. Not much written about Takashi Nomura or Furukawa but that'll likely be remedied if Chris D. ever finishes his Yakuza film encyclopedia.

Seems like an eclectic batch from Nikkatsu's most prolific and undiscovered period. Feels like Christmas I've been waiting for this set for so long. And my Kino pair has shipped so that should hold me over in the meanwhile.

colinr0380 wrote:I still wonder at just what Suzuki as a contract director could have done with Roman Porno films if he had still been at Nikkatsu after 1971 though. It seems that as long as the required nudity levels were reached, filmmakers were within reason relatively free to do what they wanted with the less important elements like plot and stylistics!

Suzuki's said that B-directors were pretty much free to do whatever they wanted too, the studio only really cared about the headliners. The problem being Suzuki entered the studio head's radar at some point and, y'know, office politics and the rest. It's fun to think how he might have pushed studio genres even further but without the mythos we may have never heard of him, he became a household name in Japan after he was fired. For the record, Gate of Flesh is viewed as an honorary Roman Porno by some.

Cold Bishop wrote:While I don't know enough about the movement to make claims of influence, if the wild stylization of a masterpiece like Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41 isn't influenced by Suzuki, its at least born of the same spirit. The entire "exploitative" turn the industry took in the early 70s almost seems like a vindication of everything Suzuki was doing at Nikkatsu when you look at the visual imagination poured into films which would have been the grindhouse trash of the West. (Of course, you probably already know this).

I'd really like to see some DVD supplements cover Suzuki's influence. I think he talks about it a bit on the R2 Branded to Kill but I never sprang for a multiregion player. A number of Nikkatsu ADs who worked under Suzuki or otherwise stayed on through the Roman Porno period and have sited him as an influence. But I think it goes wider than that and beyond film into anime and manga even. However, I'm no expert and it'd be nice if Criterion could include something like that in, say, some kind of rerelease or something...

I know virtually nothing about any of these films, but I will not hesitate a moment in purchasing this set as soon as it comes out. I love Suzuki and I loved Black Tight Killers and these all sound like merciless fun. Seeing the announcement for this absolutely made my day.

And yeah, thanks for that write-up. Very informative.

No trouble a-tall. I should note, I learned most of that from Mark Schilling's book who is the guy I think most responsible reviving interest in these films. Kudos to that dude.

Doctor Sunshine wrote:No trouble a-tall. I should note, I learned most of that from Mark Schilling's book who is the guy I think most responsible reviving interest in these films. Kudos to that dude.

Thanks for taking the time to redact that info from your earlier post...makes me all the more anxious to check this box set out. Referring back to that long post of yours, are you saying that Cruel Gun Story is a Sun Tribe movie? Or did I mis-read that?

I definitely could have written that more clearly. Season of the Sun is the first Sun Tribe movie, Cruel Gun Story appears to be a mood or borderless action film. I will elaborate:

The retrospective was and this set is comprised mostly of films from the borderless action subgenre. Basically, it's films with American- and European-type characters and settings placed in contemporary Japan. This would include all the James Bondesque hitmen, like Shishido in Branded to Kill, or that barroom brawl in Tokyo Drifter and, taken to the extreme, singing cowboy movies like Suzuki's Man with a Shotgun (a singing trucker actually but there were real singing cowboy films too). Borderless action was specific to the Nikkatsu studio. Toei, for example, had a big ex-yakuza producer and, as a result, they made more realistic, or at least more grown-up, gangster films where Nikkatsu skewed towards a younger audience and fantasy fulfillment.

Borderless action started in the late 50s and began to lose steam in the early 60s when the mood action genre caught on. Mood action films were a blending of action and romance in a film noir settings. Schilling names Masuda's Red Handkerchief the prime example of a mood action film. However, since I haven't seen that, I'll use elements of Branded to Kill as an example again since it's sort of a flexible mash of genres: think of the fatalistic ending and less weird versions of the romance and gunfights. A Colt is my Passport is said to be mood action.

Were these films well-regarded critically in Japan when they were initially released, or were they looked on (or down upon) as trashy throwaways? In any event, did they do well commercially...or just enough to earn back production costs?

Nikkatsu would make classy movies, but these were usually the second feature on a double bill. The director was usually given a script, a budget and a limited amount of time to make these. They did well enough, but toward the late sixties, these films were going out of style, that's why Nikkatsu went into the Roman-Porno genre. They started doing the double bill when Nikkatsu started losing business to studios like Shochiku and Toho.

Now these films are treated like the way we treat old second bill noirs from the golden age, but back in the day, it was made mostly to enter older men and kids (much like genre classics from Hollywood).

I'm very glad to see this getting a release and can't wait to own "A Colt is My Passport". Now I'd love to see more Nikkatsu action on the way, especially the films of Yasaru Hasabe. An Eclipse Stray Cat Rock boxset would be a dream.

Tribe wrote:Were these films well-regarded critically in Japan when they were initially released, or were they looked on (or down upon) as trashy throwaways? In any event, did they do well commercially...or just enough to earn back production costs?

I've tried to find box office numbers and contemporary reviews but there's not much to be had for us anglophones. In general though, Nikkatsu Action was very popular and the studio's bread and butter for a good 15 years. While it might be tempting to drawn a comparison to today's Hollywood fare, you have to remember this was the 60s and they were all influenced by contemporary Hollywood and French New Wave films and all made by young filmmakers (Masuda turned 30 while shooting Rusty Knife). They weren't all B pictures either, Masuda and Kurahara were two of the studio's top directors and Yujiro Ishihara was Japan's biggest star. Imamura may have been the studio's prestige director but they didn't treat him very well--with the suspension after Pigs and Battleships and him going independent as soon as he could--surely if he earned as well as the action directors he would have been given a freer rein.

For critical response I have to speculate even more extensively but the studio was star driven, so I imagine reviews were hit and miss like everything else, but the focus would have been on the cast, like Ishihara and Shishido, and critics are as likely as the public to be enamoured or not with a pretty face. Now in Japan, there are huge DVD box sets dedicated to Ishihara and Kobayashi so these films definitely weren't forgotten. With retroactive auteurism, Masuda's had a comprehensive book written about his films and Takeshi Kitano's production company did a Kurahara retro of his Nikkatsu films just last year. In Tadao Sato's 1982 book Currents in Japanese Cinema, he focuses on all the same filmmakers that Donald Richie and other English writers do for the most part, that's to say largely skimming over (non-Suzuki) Nikkatsu Actioners but some do get mentioned. The book's just a broad overview's overview by one guy though so I can't vouch for it's indicativeness. I know there are recent Nikkatsu poster books dedicated to these types of films and who knows how much other stuff published on the subject over there.

Specifically, Rusty Knife was the seventh highest grossing film in Japan that year. I Am Waiting and A Colt Is My Passport were breakthroughs for Kurahara and Shishido respectively. Take Aim at the Police Van probably didn't do great business. Suzuki really didn't start drawing a following until Kanto Wanderer three years later. Cruel Gun Story, I don't know.

Also, Criterion now have trailers up on the website for Rusty Knife, Take Aim at the Police Van and A Colt Is My Passport.