The Hidden Profile / 風の視線 / Kaze no shisen (‘Gaze of the Wind’, 1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #181

Shima Iwashita

 

Keisuke Sonoi

 

Natsui (Keisuke Sonoi) is a photographer who has just entered into an arranged marriage with Chikako (Shima Iwashita). Their honeymoon is an awkward flop, but during the trip Natsui discovers the body of a suicide victim, grabs his camera and snaps away with ghoulish gusto.  He later uses the photos in an exhibition which is a big hit. 

 

Michiyo Aratama

 

Akira Yamanouchi

Keiji Sada

Natsui is actually in love with Ayako (Michiyo Aratama), but not only is she married to the mostly-absent Shigetaka (Akira Yamanouchi), but she’s in love with Kuze (Keiji Sada), with whom she’s having an affair, and who is also married and having an affair with a clingy bar hostess. It gradually emerges that Ayako was the one who arranged the marriage between Natsui and Chikako, partly to get Natsui to stop pestering her, but also because she knew that Chikako was having an affair with Shigetaka …

 

 

Perhaps it was somebody’s sly joke that this adaptation of a 1961 novel by Japan’s best-selling mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto begins with the discovery of a body but turns out to be a romantic drama rather than a crime story. A Shochiku production directed by Yoshiro Kawazu, who made the previously-reviewed Eyes of a Child (1955), it also features a rather stiff cameo by Seicho Matsumoto himself as a writer Kuze runs into in a bar. 

 

Seicho Matsumoto and Keiji Sada

 

The plot features a couple of unlikely and fairly pointless coincidences and in this case the level of suspense is mild to say the least. Despite a promising cast, nobody gets a chance to do their best work here, while composer Chuji Kinoshita simply seizes the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Toshiro Mayuzumi and Sei Ikeno and experiment with a musical saw for no good reason. A story concerning such a bizarre web of intertwined relationships might have worked as a farcical black comedy, but the film takes itself far too seriously and plods leadenly on to its contrived conclusion, making it hard to regard it as anything other than a competent failure. 

 

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

English subtitles courtesy of Coralsundy can be found here.

 

Forest of No Escape / 花実のない森 / Kajitsu no nai mori (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #104

Ayako Wakao

Umeki (Keisuke Sonoi) is a car salesman who gives a lift to two women whose car has broken down. He’s immediately attracted by the beauty and well-dressed sophistication of one of his passengers, Miyuki (Ayako Wakao), with whom he soon becomes obsessed, even though she’s clearly out of his league. After Umeki questions a hotel clerk about her, he is approached by Hamada (Eiji Funakoshi), who invites him for a drink and confides that he is pursuing the same woman. The two men agree to remain friendly rivals and exchange information about Miyuki, who is extremely reticent about her private life. It turns out that she lives with her half-brother, Hidemichi (Takahiro Tamura), who harbours an incestuous desire for her. Umeki decides to install his current girlfriend, Setsuko (Kyoko Enami), in their household as a spy by getting her to work as a maid there. It becomes apparent that there are other men in Miyuki’s life as well, and the feelings of obsession and jealousy she inspires in the various men competing for her attentions soon leads to murder… 

 

Based on an untranslated novel by Seicho Matsumoto, this Daiei production reunited star Ayako Wakao with director Sokichi Tomimoto, with whom she had recently made Frolic of the Beasts. He does a decent but unremarkable job, while Wakao is terrific as usual, especially in a scene in which she learns about a murder and you can really see the wheels turning in her head as she processes the information. It's a masterclass in reactive acting.

Keisuke Sonoi

 

As the male lead, the little-known Keisuke Sonoi is competent but lacking in star quality, while Takahiro Tamura is a little over-the-top at times as the jealous and possessive brother. Eiji Funakoshi, on the other hand, hits the right note as a man who has completely given himself over to his obsession, while behind the horn-rimmed glasses of Miyuki’s fashion-designer friend lurks Rieko Sumi, aka Natsuko from Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido (see previous review). 

Eiji Funakoshi

As Umeki's girlfriend, Kyoko Enami gives a strong performance in an underwritten role - she was soon to become a major star after Ayako Wakao hurt herself when she slipped in her bathroom and had to withdraw from the title role of Onna no toba (Lady Gambler), leaving Enami to step in and score a big hit which sparked a series of 17 films.

Kyoko Enami

 

As one would expect from a Matsumoto story, there is a good twist at the end but, unfortunately, there is also some very lazy writing – we get zero explanation of exactly how Umeki manages to get Setsuko a job as Miyuki’s maid, for instance. It also seems as if we’re supposed to take Umeki’s behaviour – which we would call stalking today – as perfectly normal, and the ease with which people provide him with sensitive personal information about Miyuki is entirely unrealistic. Having read a couple of books by Seicho Matsumoto (in translation), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these weaknesses are present in the original, especially as screenwriter Kazuo Funahashi, who also adapted Mishima’s Frolic of the Beasts and Tsutomu Mizukami’s Temple of Wild Geese, tended to be faithful to his literary sources as far as possible. It’s perhaps also worth noting that Daiei seemed to have a policy of restricting the running times of their films to around 90 minutes, which would have made any extra exposition challenging.

 

Featuring what sounds like a musical saw, Sei Ikeno’s music is too often eccentric and distracting, although it does become highly effective at the end when events reach their climax. Overall, the film holds the interest fairly well despite its unconvincing set-up, and it makes a pretty good vehicle for the great talent of Ayako Wakao, who also changes hairstyles and clothes numerous times throughout.

 

The Japanese title can be translated as either ‘Forest without Flowers and Fruits’ or ‘Forest without Substance’; in my opinion, the latter reading makes more sense. In either case, it’s a metaphor, so any tree fans out there may be disappointed to learn of the absence of an actual forest. 

Bonus trivia: In 1975, actor Keisuke Sonoi was sentenced to ten years in prison for tax evasion.