Radiance Films: The Betrayal (1966) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Radiance Films

Prolific Japanese auteur Tokuzô Tanaka, a former assistant director on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, is one of the great underrated filmmakers of the 1960s.  From his brush with the kaiju film ala The Whale God to his take on the legend of The Snow Woman (covered in Radiance Films’ Daiei Gothic box), Tanaka was not only a versatile and skilled technical craftsman but he excelled at nearly every genre he came across with painterly visually dynamic exercises in genre cinema.  His 1966 jidaigeki samurai epic The Betrayal recently restored by Kadokawa Pictures in a lush new 2.35:1 scope widescreen transfer and released on blu-ray by Radiance Films is no exception.  Starring the great Raizo Ichikawa from the Shinobi film series as well as the A Certain Killer/A Killer’s Key two-film set from Arrow Video, it’s a stylish and violent black-and-white period revenge saga featuring a standout finale of samurai battling that absolutely paved the way for a certain House of Blue Leaves fight.

 
Amid samurai warfare, a well-intentioned samurai named Takuma Kobuse (Raizo Ichikawa) agrees to take the blame for a murder committed by one of his comrades in order to protect the integrity of his clan.  The catch is he must disappear in exile for a year before making a safe return back home.  However, he is betrayed upon return and becomes a fugitive outlaw being pursued by his very own clansmen.  Friends and his lover fall away from him as he grows increasingly disdainful of the hypocrisies of the bushido samurai code of honor.  Backed into a corner with more and more adversaries piling up towards a climactic battle, he is forced to engage in sword fighting combat with former close friends and entire armies of warriors in possibly the biggest most extravagant crimson fueled samurai action exchanges in cinematic memory. 

 
Visually stunning from its lush production and art design by Yoshinobu Nishioka, dynamic breathtaking cinematography by Shogun Assassin cameraman Chikashi Makiura and an appropriately (if not time-honored) somber mournful doom filled score by Akira Ifukube, The Betrayal is a slick clean bladed killer of a film.  From Raizo Ichikawa’s beleaguered hero thrust into a world of lurking and stealthing his way about whole armies hounding for his blood to the tenderness of the two women he crosses paths with, his girl Namie (Kaoru Yachigusa) and Shino (Shiho Fujimura), to its astonishing seventeen minute fight sequence, everyone and all of the elements of the film are finely tuned to pitch perfect appeal.  This sequence alone is worthy of study in cinema circles for eons to come with its breathtaking choreography and moving (sometimes interchangeable) set pieces.

 
Making its worldwide debut on blu-ray disc via Radiance Films who have housed the limited edition set with plentiful extras, reversible sleeve art and the time-honored OBI-spines, The Betrayal includes select-scent audio commentary by Asian film expert Tom Mes, two visual essays and a collectible booklet of liner notes.  Tokuzô Tanaka is something of an understated master of genre cinema whose offerings to the samurai jidaigeki film remain indelible if not quintessential to the Japanese cinematic conversation and it is thrilling to see boutique labels such as Radiance Films and SRS Cinema rolling out the red carpet for his oeuvre.  Raizo Ichikawa is one of the great Japanese screen icons of the 1960s with his foray into the Shinobi film series but if I had to lean towards a personal favorite film of his so far it would undoubtedly be this one.  A somber, sobering endurance survival samurai thriller with one gargantuan Hell of a payoff, The Betrayal is pretty much a perfect film ripe for rediscovery by world cinema fans.

--Andrew Kotwicki