Radiance Films: The Shape of Night (1964) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Radiance Films

Years before the late South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s Bad Guy and even further before Kinji Fukusaku’s Street Mobster, Shochiku stalwart Noboru Nakamura unveiled his 1964 prostitution drama The Shape of Night which seemed to pave the way for the multicolored romantic longings of epicurean hedonism characterizing Wong Kar-Wai’s kaleidoscopic tales of people falling in and out of love.  A movie signified by its luminous nighttime aesthete of Tokyo neon-fluorescent lighting and moody jazz infused score, the film was decades ahead of American screen portraits of sex workers as well as a perverse character study of a frail woman beaten into submission by her domineering loser yakuza boyfriend.  Even with the door open for her to freely leave this way of life infringed upon her, she neither wants nor knows how to walk through the exit.

 
Young factory girl by day and parttime bar hostess at night Yoshie (Miyuki Kuwano) starts taking to one of her regular patrons named Eiji (Mikijirô Hira) and begins going out with him.  Her carefree naivete proves to be her undoing when Eiji turns out to be a yakuza who quickly forces Yoshie into a life of prostitution at the behest of his sleazy yakuza elders.  Upon discovering her and pushing Eiji back into line, she is subsequently gang raped by the elders and her sense of self-worth is thrown into chaos as she finds herself working sleepless nights with many clients only for her boyfriend to steal and blow her hard earnings on booze.  Meanwhile another client who takes a liking to her and recognizes the abuses of her boyfriend pimp tries to talk her into eloping with her, if only she could convince herself she has a life worth living outside of this unwanted arrangement. 

 
Based on the novel by Kyoko Ohta adapted for the screen by Toshidi Gondo, the Shochiku produced film is a reaction to the then-budding Japanese New Wave predating the phantasmagorical psychedelic freakouts of Seijun Suzuki or Nobuhiko Obayashi as well as a showcase for Double Suicide cinematographer Tôichirô Narushima’s Shochiku Grandscope 2.35:1 camerawork.  For all of its grim subject matter it is a uniquely lyrical and understated film, unlike the later inspired Kim Ki-duk full frontal shocker, The Shape of Night is more allusive and suggestive rather than pushing sexual assault into the viewer’s face.  Aiding the neon-fluorescent nighttime vistas is a seductively somber jazz infused score by Masanobu Higure who would go on to score numerous episodes of the show Ultraman Taro.

 
Mikijirô Hira makes Eiji into a reprehensible reprobate who initially presents himself to Yoshie as debonair and cool but soon after raping her starts to show his true drunken stupid unkempt colors, though that doesn’t stop the once chipper and lively Miyuki Kuwano now sunken into despair and defeat with her eyes hung low from gazing upon Eiji with lucky, even contented eyes.  The more her client friend urges her to run away with him and reclaim her agency, the more she doubles down on being bound to this guy who in the scheme of things is on the lower end of the yakuza food chain.  Seeing Miyuki Kuwano’s personality change reminded me of Joan Crawford’s prostitute from Rain slowly having her spunky no-nonsense personality siphoned out of her.  It hurts more in that we know how this woman started out and what she’s become after what the cruel night world of Tokyo has done to her.

 
Making its worldwide blu-ray disc premiere through Radiance Films who have given the film a deluxe treatment with their trademark obi banners, reversible sleeve art and collectible booklet penned by Chuck Stephens as well as a visual essay by Takashi Miike disciple Tom Mes and an interview with Yoshio Nakamura with some hidden easter eggs, Noboru Nakamura’s elegantly constructed and presented The Shape of Night is almost like the Japanese far-end equivalent of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.  With a vast disparity between the daytime and sordid night life, lensed with lush bleeding if not radiating colors edited together in a startling succession of images, The Shape of Night while set in the gritty real world feels curiously dreamlike and even elliptical.  Radiance’s blu-ray disc is wonderful and this frequently overlooked masterpiece is a feast for the eyes when it isn’t a neon flickering dagger through the heart.

--Andrew Kotwicki