Obscure Japanese Film #119
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| Kenji Sugawara |
When salaryman Uoza (Kenji Sugawara) returns from a mountaineering trip and encounters his friend and former climbing partner Kosaka (Keizo Kawasaki) in a restaurant, he’s astonished to find that Kosaka is there to meet a married woman, Minako (Fujiko Yamamoto).
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| Keizo Kawasaki and Fujiko Yamamoto |
Feeling awkward, Uoza makes his excuses and leaves, but Minako catches up with him outside and asks if she can speak to him. Uoza learns that the relationship between Kosaka and Minako has been going on for a while although they’ve only slept together once. She regards the event as a moment of madness on her part and has been trying to break if off, but Kosaka has fallen head over heels for her and won’t accept this, so Minako wants to enlist Uoza’s help in order to make Kosaka see sense. Minako’s anxiety may also be partly due to the fact that her older husband, Yashiro (Ken Uehara with white hair), is a man not easily deceived.
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| Ken Uehara |
Uoza decides to take Kosaka with him on his next trip to the mountains, where they attempt a difficult climb which Uoza hopes will take his friend’s mind off his emotional troubles. He also takes the opportunity to try and talk some sense into Kosaka, who finally seems to be resigning himself to a life without Minako. However, when they continue the last stage of their climb, Kosaka’s supposedly unbreakable nylon rope breaks and Uoza can only watch in horror as his friend falls down the mountainside…
Yasuzo Masumura’s fourth film as director covers similar territory to his better-known picture A Wife Confesses (1961). Kaneto Shindo’s screenplay was based on a novel published the previous year by the prolific Yasushi Inoue, who would go on to become one of Japan’s most respected authors but had yet to acquire that status. At the time, Inoue’s story was a topical one as he had based it on a couple of recent mountain accidents involving a new type of nylon rope.
In the lead, actor Kenji Sugawara is a little on the stolid side, but was probably selected as much for his physical toughness – he was a 3rd dan in judo – as his acting ability. The film’s location photography is impressive and it certainly appears as if at least some of the climbing sequences were shot on location at Mount Hotaka in challenging conditions.
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| Hitomi Nozoe |
In the latter half of the film, Hitomi Nozoe has an important part as Kosaka’s sister. Any appearance by Nozoe is welcome in my view as she was an underrated actor, and her brilliant comic performance in Masumura’s Giants and Toys made that movie (and as we can see here, there was nothing wrong with her teeth!). Another actor who makes an impression is Kyu Sazanka, who uses every trick in the book to steal all of his scenes as Uoza’s boss.
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| Kyu Sazanka |
The Precipice was shot in Daiei’s briefly-adopted VistaVision process, with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, so it’s a little unusual in that respect as it was the 2.35:1 format that rapidly became standard in Japan around this time, replacing the old academy ratio of 1.33:1. Masumura and his cameraman Hiroshi Murai (who later shot Sword of Doom) use the VistaVision format to good effect here, pinning the characters down with clever blocking of scenes, with the camera closely following their every movement, and managing to squeeze in two or even three of the main characters at once when appropriate.
The plot has its flaws, with one unlikely coincidence feeling especially unnecessary, but it’s such a well-made film that it remains worth watching, and the moving music by Akira Ifukube is a major asset. Inoue's story has proved a popular one in Japan and been remade for TV on a number of occasions.
Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as ‘Ice Wall’.
Thanks to Coralsundy for the English subtitles, which can be found here.
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