Last year the film world
lost one of it’s greatest iconoclastic countercultural surrealists: Japanese
film director Seijun Suzuki. Having left
behind an enduring legacy of films to be studied and revered for years to come,
including but not limited to Tokyo
Drifter, Branded to Kill, Gate of Flesh, Story of a Prostitute and Zigunerweisen
from his celebrated Taisho Trilogy,
the maverick Japanese auteur left an unmistakable imprint that not only forever
altered the face of Japanese cinema but arguably that of world cinema
entire.
In the wake of his death,
the UK based home video company Arrow Video have taken it upon themselves to
not only bring his beloved Taisho Trilogy
to western viewers as never seen or heard before, but now they appear to be
digging up his rarely seen early-Nikkatsu back catalog prior to his termination
over Branded to Kill. In what appears to be a continuing film
series, the first boxed set entitled Seijun
Suzuki – The Early Years Vol. 1, Arrow Video have licensed a total of five
films spanning from 1958 through to 1965, charting the director’s early rise to
fame as a director-for-hire before exhibiting his surreal, nonlinear and
absurdist characteristics that would make him a midnight movie sensation in his
homeland.
While not every film is
necessarily comparable to what would come later, it’s a curious and often
fascinating glimpse into one of cinema’s greatest artists in the act of finding
his voice before finally showing his face.
On the cusp of Arrow Video’s announcement of a second volume of Seijun Suzuki – The Early Years, let us
take a look at the five films that would gradually pave the way for the
director’s eventual cinematic rebellion against the film company that made him
famous. In these films which share a
kindred theme concerning the ongoing war between citizens and the stronghold of
the Yakuza, adolescent coming-of-age tales about delinquent youths and even an
early peek at what would or would not become the Taisho Trilogy, we’re given an early look at a director-for-hire’s
gradual ascension into that of a wholly original creative visionary.
The Boy Who Came Back (1958)
Among the first of the
so-called Nikkatsu Diamond Guys productions,
The Boy Who Came Back is a Yakuza
driven crime drama which zeroes in on a tumultuous relationship involving young
former reform school hoodlum brother Nobou (frequent Suzuki collaborator Akira
Kobayashi) and his BBS agent Keiko (Sachiko Hidari) trying to get the
delinquent’s life back on track. Part
teen melodrama and moralist fable, part indictment of the Yakuza which would
become the focus of Suzuki’s later Nikkatsu work, The Boy Who Came Back is a frequently compelling drama which
introduces one of the earliest iterations of postwar Japan and the heavy
overarching western influences felt in their culture. It’s not an accident that many of the film’s
key plot points take place in a westernized Jazz club.
Though straightforward and
lacking the idiosyncratic weirdness Suzuki became known for, the
young-director’s early effort (one of four delivered for Nikkatsu in the same
year) demonstrated his innate visual talent, penchant for drama and keen
ability as a compelling storyteller and director of actors. Kobayashi does a decent job as the troubled
youth who keeps jumping ship at every opportunity to make something of himself,
though the film’s real focus is Hidari as the determined BBS agent who will
take full blown slaps and screams to the face from Nobou yet will not give up
when everyone else already has. It's a difficult role to be in, taking such abuse yet refusing to abandon the troubled youth out of belief there's still a chance for redemption even as the situation grows more hopeless.
Watching this early Suzuki
effort is both an eye-opener displaying Suzuki’s visual talent yet at the same
time viewers accustomed to his often abstract narratives will become frustrated
with the earnest straightforwardness of the piece. We’ve come to expect this kind of heartfelt
sermonizing from Kurosawa given his entire career before, during and after his
suicide attempt which colored the rest of his work for years to come, but not
from Suzuki. In a way, you can pick up
on why the maverick B movie director got tired of churning these movies out and
started to destroy the narrative flow from the ground up near the end of his
Nikkatsu tenure. As such, however, it’s
a decent early effort that would forecast the kindred themes shared by the next
two pictures in this film series.
Score:
The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass (1961)
The one and only color
effort in this Arrow Video film series and the only one offering a glimpse into
Suzuki’s penchant for the carnivalesque seen years later in Kagero-Za, The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass is an often
amusing and even charmingly funny family drama involving an intelligent
traveling university student named Shintaro Funaki (Koji Wada) who hitches a
ride with a down-on-their-luck traveling magic show troupe and soon begins to
offer help in any capacity he can. Along
the way, the troupe encounters everyone from rival acts, street carnival
peddlers and inevitably the Yakuza, with the ensemble cast of characters’ pasts
catching up with them in unexpected ways.
An oddly heartwarming, occasionally poignant and colorful tale of the
interplay between performance art spectacle, familial bonds and perseverance in
the face of adversity, The Wind-of-Youth
Group Crosses the Mountain Pass offers both old fashioned whimsy and forecasts
what would or would not become the director’s trademark hyperkinetic visual
style.
Take for instance a stage
production involving a musical revue, serving up song and dance in addition to
the troupe’s trademark magic acts. As
with The Boy Who Came Back, Suzuki
exploits his penchant for western Jazz and the sight of several performers on a
psychedelic stage set with the bassist tossing about his instrument with
gleeful abandon, one can’t help but sense something oddball about the
scenery. Suzuki may have been a director
for hire but it’s in moments like these were we start to see traces of the
madcap subversive visionary he would soon evolve into. Wind-of-Youth
Group also offers up snippets of the raw sexuality later found in Suzuki’s Gate of Flesh, Branded to Kill and of course Zigunerweisen
in the form of Akemi, a curvy and sultry stripper who becomes the object of a
battle between the magic troupe and a crippled Yakuza eager to capitalize on
her striptease talents.
If there is a complaint to
make about this early gaze into Suzuki’s kaleidoscopic visual imagination, it’s
the flawlessness of the central hero Funaki whose earnestness, good cheer and
youthful wisdom seems a bit too perfect even for this rural fantasy
serenade. While ostensibly the catalyst
to turn this broken down band of outsiders, he feels a bit more like a device
than a believable character. That said, Wind-of-Youth offers up so much fun that
viewers aren’t likely to care and the inherent personal flaws of the magic
troupe counterbalance Funaki’s perfection.
For this early feel-good color effort, you can tell Suzuki is having fun
even as he’s doing a studio job and the best moments are when the film is at it’s
goofiest and most playful.
Score:
Teenage Yakuza (1962)
Returning to the gritty
postwar city streets of Japan visited in The
Boy Who Came Back, the third feature in Arrow Video’s box set Teenage Yakuza stands in sharp relief to
the silly circus antics of The
Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass and gets back to basics in a
serious minded tale of extortion, loyalty and chivalry in the face of
evil. Concerning two best friends, Jiro
(Tamio Kawachi) and Yoshio, who find themselves on the violent receiving end of
the K-Club yakuza gang, Yoshio emerges permanently disabled with a lifelong
limp. In turn, Yoshio receives an offer
to join the very gang which left him crippled and partake in the onslaught of
extortion from local businesses trying to stay afloat. Jiro, however, isn’t having it and becomes
the town hero when he stands up to the yakuza’s terrorizing of the business
owners. The central dilemma quickly
becomes: can Jiro draw his best friend Yoshio out of the gang before he’s
swallowed up by it?
Partially a coming-of-age
tale of the bonds of friendship and just how far one will go to rescue someone
who doesn’t want to be helped, much like The
Boy Who Came Back it’s a tale of sin vs. redemption, love vs. hate and
ignorance vs. wisdom. Unlike the
all-too-perfect Shintaro Funaki from the previous feature, Teenage Yakuza’s Jiro is conflicted, desperately trying to do right
when his own notions of what are just and true become increasingly blurry. Also a tale of juvenile delinquency and how
fitting into the Yakuza as well as the high school in-crowd aren’t as
dissimilar as we’re led to believe. A
key subplot involves a carefree teenage girl (played by Midori Tashiro) who
frequently stirs up the complacent calm of restaurants with her own brand of
song and dance when she isn’t egging on the K-Club boys and students to engage
in fistfights. Though a minor character,
her role in the film speaks volumes to confused youths wanting to fit in while
losing sight of their own moral compass in the process.
The shortest film in the series,
running a mere seventy-one minutes with a breakneck pace that’s easy to lose track
of, Teenage Yakuza is a bit of a
mixed bag in that the narrative flow feels a bit rushed at times. While it isn’t difficult to follow, there
were some character threads that deserved to be fleshed out more clearly and
felt undercut by the more abrupt approach to terse editing. Visually, the film is of course splendid with
Suzuki displaying an even greater command of the medium in terms of framing,
camera placement and the actor’s position in relation to the camera. There’s also a tense and believable story
being told about how easy it is to jettison our personalities and loyalties in
order to climb some sort of social ladder, no matter how corrupt and amoral the
strive to be part of ‘something’ may be.
Overall it’s an often compelling and even moving piece that moved just a
little too fast for this Suzuki fan’s liking.
Score:
The Incorrigible (1963)
Taking on the Taisho period
for the first time, decades before unveiling his masterful Taisho Trilogy, the fourth feature in Arrow’s Seijun Suzuki box The Incorrigible (also known as The Bastard or The Young Rebel) functions as a kind of loose autobiography by
novelist Toko Kon recounting his journey from juvenile delinquent towards
mature adult. After being expelled from
Kobe, junior student Togo Konno (Ken Yamanouchi) is banished by his mother to
the rural countryside village of Toyooka with the school headmaster’s promise
to set him on the straight and narrow path.
Rebellious at heart, Togo
quickly upsets the carefully guarded moral code policed by the senior student
enforced Public Morals Unit who exercise their authority by way of physical
punishment. Upstaging their dim
intellect as he sports and recites The Red
Room by Strindberg while outwitting their one-up gameplay even as he’s
outnumbered, Togo soon sets his sights on a beautiful young local girl, Emiko
(Masako Izumi), who also happens to be the doctor’s daughter. As the Public Morals Unit strictly forbids
teenage romance, Emiko and Togo must practice their love in secret with the
help of Emiko’s friend Yoshi (Midori Tashiro from Teenage Yakuza).
As a first look at the
Taisho period for Suzuki, The
Incorrigible is visually lush with frequent scenes of hard rain against
bamboo forests and wide shots of mountain tops looming over the small rural
village. Adding to the film’s poignant
worldview is the original score by frequent Suzuki collaborator Hajime Okumura,
mixing somber strings with subtle piano tunes that form a passionate yet bleak
soundscape. In a way, the soundtrack
forecasts the futility of the secret lovers, suggesting trying to maintain
their ruse will inevitably end with time and tide.
Not unlike Romeo and Juliet in a way, The Incorrigible becomes a coming-of-age
tale of forbidden frowned-upon romance in a repressive culture torn between
tradition from the Meiji Restoration and the newly assimilated western norms
including but not limited to attire, literature and music. As a narrative, The Incorrigible charts the secret lovers’ journey toward
maturation as the once worldly and defiant Togo gradually begins to understand
his place in life. In a way, you can
sense in Togo’s rebellion against culturally accepted norms of the time a hint
of Suzuki’s own gradual rebellion against the systemic conventionality of
Nikkatsu Studios, choosing instead to follow his own path rather than the one
expected of him.
Score:
Born Under Crossed Stars (1965)
The second adaptation of one
of novelist Toko Kon’s works set in the Taisho period and final film in Arrow
Video’s Suzuki box, Born Under Crossed
Stars touches on many of the same thematic interests explored in The Incorrigible while openly channeling
many of the absurdist sight gags soon to present themselves in full bloom in
his surreal Yakuza freakout Tokyo Drifter. Focusing on a young milk delivery boy named
Jukichi, from a dysfunctional family whose father gambles away the earnings on
cock fighting (featuring real footage of the illegal spectator sport), Born Under Crossed Stars charts the
youth’s ongoing entanglements with the Yakuza amid a romantic triangle
involving two different women: mature and reserved Suzuko over forthright and
free-spirited Taneko.
While nowhere near as
affecting as The Incorrigible, what
stands out most notably in Born Under
Crossed Stars is the emergence of Suzuki’s increasingly surreal comic
lunacy with visual comic motifs that can’t help but perplex as they tickle the
ribs. Take for instance a sequence where
the arrogant Jukichi engages the Yakuza on their own turf, leaving on the
doorstep a confetti of broken glass, and yes it plays out as sheer slapstick echoing
the heydays of Laurel and Hardy or The Three Stooges. Later still, one pursues Jukichi into an open
field where farmers take refuge in the tall grass only to pop back up like a
jack-in-the-box one-by-one as the limping Yakuza walks across the panoramic
frame.
And then there’s the love
triangle itself with the sex starved Taneko tricking Jukichi into meeting her,
dragging him into a hot tub which no doubt forecasted the awkward comical
sexual tension in the first volume of manga artist Ken Akamatsu’s Love Hina. Given Suzuki’s eventual countercultural
status in Japan as a midnight movie sensation following his termination from
Nikkatsu and short lived exile from filmmaking, one can’t help but think
moments like this factored into influencing the popular manga series. As with The
Incorrigible, Born Under Crossed
Stars counterbalances the absurdities with real tragedy, human pathos and the
notion of jilted love amid adolescent romantic confusion as a building block
towards manhood. Being the final film in
Arrow Video’s first iteration of Seijun
Suzuki – The Early Years, Born Under
Crossed Stars closes the series on an appropriately anticipatory note,
suggesting this will be the last time we get a straightforward Suzuki narrative.
One gets the sense that from
here, Suzuki like his leading protagonist has reached a crossroad where he will
decide whether or not he’ll continue to follow the path laid forth by the
studio which hired him or if he’ll violently rebel and chart out his own
direction off the beaten path. Although
as a standalone piece the film’s central protagonist didn’t grip me with quite
the intensity of the previous Taisho period offering, Born Under Crossed Stars as part of the Arrow Video series in
hindsight plays like an announcement by Suzuki that he’s finally found his
niche and is ready to do take on the film world entire. Though it may not be among Suzuki’s best, up
to this point it is undoubtedly the most sincere personal expression made yet
by a budding artist in the act of discovering who he is and what he really
means to say.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki