Obscure Japanese Film #137
 |
| Keiji Sada |
Masao Oda
This Shochiku production stars Keiji Sada as Hagisaki, the deputy head of an accounts department whose boss, Sekino (Masao Oda), commits suicide. Hagisaki receives a letter from the dead man explaining that he felt it was the only way to take responsibility for losing 30 million yen of the company’s money as a result of a scam.
Ko Nishimura
Shinji Takano
Despite being warned by the company’s lawyer, Segawa (Ko Nishimura), not to interfere, Hagisaki takes it upon himself to investigate and joins forces with his friend Tamura, a journalist (Shinji Takano). Their clues lead them first to the Red Moon bar on the Ginza, and eventually to a mountain village in Nagano.
Fumio Watanabe and Jun Tatara
Yachiyo Otori
Jun Usami
Among the other people involved in the mystery are bartender Yamamoto (Fumio Watanabe), a private detective (Jun Tatara), a moneylender’s secretary named Etsuko (Yachiyo Otori) and right-wing politician Funasaka (Jun Usami), but it proves to be a crusty old villager (Bokuzen Hidari) who provides the key to the mystery before events reach a gruesome climax involving an acid bath…
Bokuzen Hidari
Based on a novel of the same name by popular mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto, this story is typical of the author’s work, but not one of the best adaptations of it. Masayoshi Ikeda’s suspenseful music score helps, but the story is allowed to become a little too complicated for its own good and fails to maintain the interest as a result.
It also doesn’t help that the hero, Hagisaki, is such a blank slate of a character – Keiji Sada was a good actor, but he’s given very little to work with here, which is at least partly his own fault as he was a big enough star to have made changes if he had cared to. It’s competently but rather indifferently directed by Hideo Oba, best known for his What Is Your Name? trilogy (1953-54), which also starred Keiji Sada, but the proceedings are occasionally enlivened by some of the excellent character actors who pop up along the way.
Yachiyo Otori
Leading lady Yachiyo Otori had been a stage star for the Takarazuka theatre company; this was her first film under contract to Shochiku. She makes little impact here, although it’s not much of a role, to be fair. Her film career never really took off and she had more success on stage and television. At the time of writing, she’s still alive at the age of 91.
No comments:
Post a Comment