Aku no kaidan / 悪の階段 (‘Stairway to Evil’, 1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #260

Tsutomu Yamazaki

Ko Nishimura

Daisuke Kato

Akira Kubo

Iwao (Tsutomu Yamazaki, the kidnapper from Kurosawa’s High and Low) heads a gang of robbers comprised of Shimoyama (Ko Nishimura), the muscle; Konishi (Daisuke Kato), the getaway driver; Kumagai (Akira Kubo), the safecracker, and himself as mastermind. After making a huge score of over 40 million yen, they agree to split the loot equally four ways and leave it untouched for six months until the heat has cooled. However, it turns out that there’s little honour among thieves, and the men soon begin to fall out, partly due to greed, but also because of lust for Iwao’s girlfriend and accomplice, Rumiko (Reiko Dan)...

Reiko Dan

This Toho production was based on a 1964 novel entitled Ore no yumi wa… (‘My Dream Is…’) by Norio Nanjo (1908-2004), who had also supplied the source material for Masaki Kobayashi’s The Inheritance (1962) and Umetsugu Inoue’s The Third Shadow Warrior (1963). Like those stories, this one takes a rather jaundiced view of human nature, something which Nanjo seems to have shared with this film’s writer and director, Hideo Suzuki, who had made the similarly misanthropic Structure of Hate in 1961.

Reiko Dan

This is noir at its noirest, with dark shadows dominating the visual design throughout. Unusually for a Japanese film of its time, it’s shot in academy ratio, so whenever we get a close-up (which is often), the actor’s faces completely fill the screen. The film not only looks striking, but also sounds great due to Masaru Sato’s cool jazz score. The only element which I found a little disappointing was the plot – once you know where it’s going (which is quite early on), everything unfolds all too predictably.

Thankfully, the excellent cast help to keep the interest with the usually vivacious Reiko Dan successfully cast against type as a cold and gloomy moll, and – looking like the sinister love-child of Peter Lorre and Christopher Lee – the diminutive Ko Nishimura managing to be totally convincing as a man who could kill you with his bare hands (and probably would given half a chance).

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Niwatori wa futatabi naku / 鶏はふたゝび鳴く (‘The Cock Crows Twice’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film # 259

Eijiro Tono and Yoko Minakaze

After a man trying to find oil in order to revive the fortunes of his dying seaside town commits suicide, the locals blame Fumiko (Yoko Minakaze), a young woman who had rejected his sudden offer of marriage. Fumiko lives with her father, Tokinosuke (Eijiro Tono, great), who has been going to pieces since his wife ran off with another man. Ostracised by the townsfolk, Fumiko heads towards the sea with the intention of ending it all, but is spotted by an itinerant oil worker (Shuji Sano) who prevents her from going through with it. He and four other men have been left stranded since the suicide of their boss and Fumiko is moved by their kindness and relates to their outside status.

Shuji Sano

Sachiko Hidari, Minakaze and Yoko Kozono

It emerges that Fumiko has two female friends, Yoko (Yoko Kozono/Kosono) and Taniko (Sachiko Hidari), with whom she has made a suicide pact, each carrying a deadly pill in a locket around their necks. Yoko’s reason for being miserable is that she’s the daughter of a concubine (Sadako Sawamura), while Taniko’s is that she’s physically disabled and has to walk with a crutch. The women have agreed that they will all commit suicide together. Meanwhile, the stranded workers are debating whether to flee the town and escape the debts they’ve incurred or stick it out, hoping that a long-awaited telegram will arrive telling them to come to a new oil field. Then Kurama (Yunosuke Ito), an embezzler on the run from the police, arrives and claims to be an oil surveyor who intends to restart the drilling…

Yunosuke Ito

This Shintoho production has an unusual story which is a creation of Rinzo Shiina (1911-73), who wrote the original screenplay and had written the novel on which director Heinosuke Gosho’s Where Chimneys are Seen (1953) had been based. However, there are certain similarities to Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1951), which I strongly suspect influenced this film. With all the talk of suicide, it first appears to be a rather bleak drama, but gradually transforms into a comedy. It’s not like any other Gosho film I’ve seen, and I found it quite engaging and charming in the way it takes delight in continually subverting our expectations. For example, when Fumiko’s wealthy aunt who has been turning down her father’s requests for money appears, we expect that she’ll be a terrible harridan – especially as she’s played by Eiko Miyoshi – but this proves not to be quite the case.

Eiko Miyoshi

It’s surprising to see Yoko Minakaze (1930-2007) in the lead role. She doesn’t look like a film star and, indeed, wasn’t one, but for some mysterious reason I felt her lack of star quality somehow worked in this film’s favour. Coming from the theatre, she enjoyed a long career on stage as well as screens both big and small, but this may well be her most major role in movies.

It’s worth noting that screenwriter Rinzo Shiina had converted to Christianity in 1950 and it’s easy to see how his beliefs influenced this work. It’s also perhaps the reason composer Toshiro Mayuzumi used choral music for his score, although this is one element I didn’t particularly care for. In most respects, though, this film is a gem and it’s also beautifully shot by Joji Ohara, who won a Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Cinematography for his pains, making this a film crying out for a good quality release.

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The Women around the Shogun / 続大奥 (秘) 物語 / Zoku ooku maruhi monogatari (‘Secret Tales of the Inner Palace Sequel’, 1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #258

Tomoko Ogawa

This Toei production is a sequel to The Shogun and His Mistresses of the same year, and I recommend reading my review of that film first, even though this one has an entirely separate story.

It’s now 1786 and the 10^th shogun, Ieharu (Masao Mishima), is in power. Ochisa (Tomoko Ogawa), the adopted daughter of Lord Abe (Eitaro Ozawa), is sent to serve the shogun at Edo Castle, where her older sister Oshino (Hiroko Sakuramachi) is one of the shogun’s concubines. It’s not long before Ochisa is forced into the same position, but the sisters try not to become enemies despite the bitchy machinations of the other women around them. However, when the shogun suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, Ochisa finds herself sent to a nunnery with the other concubines, where they’re expected to spend the rest of their lives praying for Ieharu’s soul. The head nun (Chieko Hagashiyama) ensures that the women are cut off from the outside world with the result that one goes mad, another turns to lesbianism and a third starts an affair with a priest – but what will become of Ochisa?

Ogawa with Masao Mishima

Dropping the anthology structure of the first film and released just three months later, it’s no surprise that this rushed-into-production sequel is weaker, especially as it relies on an inexperienced actor to carry it – in her first leading role, 18-year-old Tomoko Ogawa was a last-minute replacement for Yoshiko Sakuma (who reportedly objected to what she saw as an increasing sexual emphasis, although the finished product is probably tamer than the first). As if this were not challenging enough, Ochisa is not a terribly interesting character in the first place, although she does eventually reveal another dimension towards the end and Ogawa does a fair job under the circumstances. However, although her performance was well-received and Toei planned to star her in further similar pictures, disappointing box office led them to insist that she do nude scenes from then on, causing her to quit films and turn to singing, where she found considerable success. Incidentally, Yoshiko Sakuma was not the only one to be replaced – shooting began with Michiko Saga as the older sister, but she apparently got in a strop due to too much waiting around and left after three days, forcing Toei to replace her with Hiroko Sakuramachi.

Hiroko Sakuramachi

Casting shenanigans aside, this is still a decent movie, and one which also benefits from the splendidly villainous presence of Ko Nishimura, who instigates an impressively bloody sword fight with multiple opponents at the film’s climax. Composer Sei Ikeno’s score might have been better suited to a horror movie, but it’s not ineffective, while director Sadao Nakajima (who also made the previous film) is adept at extracting the maximum amount of drama from every scene. The original screenplay by Takeo Kunihiro and Takehiro Nakajima might seem too similar to the original at first, but goes off in some interesting directions before finally revealing its surprising theme of an individual rebelling against the oppressive feudal system. Unusually, in this case, the turning worm is no put-upon samurai, but a concubine who has finally had enough of having no say in her own destiny.

Ko Nishimura

DVD at Toei Video (no English subtitles)

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Sanmon yakusha / 三文役者 (‘Third-Rate Actor’, 2000)

Obscure Japanese Film #257

Taiji Tonoyama

This late film by the prolific writer-director Kaneto Shindo (best known for his 1964 picture, Onibaba) tells the story of Taiji Tonoyama, an actor who appeared in most of Shindo’s films before his death at the age of 73 in 1989. Tonoyama was a short, prematurely bald Yoda lookalike with sad, baggy eyes, so he was usually to be found among the supporting casts of the many films he appeared in, in roles of various sizes – the only leading roles played by him that I’m aware of were in two Shindo films: The Naked Island (1960) and the previously-reviewed Libido (1967).

Naoto Takenaka

Shindo recreates scenes from the actor’s life with Naoto Takenaka as Tonoyama, placing the focus on his relationships with his first wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida), and second wife, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), whom he meets when he is 36 and still married to Asako and Kimie is 17 and working as a waitress. Tonoyama was an unlikely womaniser and we also see him picking up various barmaids with apparent ease while simultaneously fighting a lifelong battle with the demon drink. Shindo intersperses these dramatisations with scenes from the films they made together and a straight-to-camera interview with Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s mistress and eventual wife who frequently acted alongside Tonoyama (Otowa died in 1994, so Shindo must have been sitting on this for at least 6 years). Towards the end, there is also some very brief interview footage with fellow directors Shohei Imamura, Hiromichi Horikawa and Seijiro Koyama.

Nobuko Otowa

Shindo had already written a book about Tonoyama, who had also written a number of books himself, notably a 1966 volume whose title translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor (unsurprisingly, these have not made it into English).While I’ve long been a fan of Tonoyama myself, I’m not really sure that Shindo has done his memory a lot of favours by making this film. Although Naoto Takenaka’s performance seems a pretty good Tonoyama impression for the first couple of minutes, he goes on to deliver every line with exactly the same throaty, drawn-out intonation, and it gets old fast. The film is also way too long at over two hours – a one-hour documentary would have been far more preferable in my view, especially as the end result feels so superficial and sentimental, with the repetitive piano and violin music-by-numbers score delivering the coup de grâce to what is easily the weakest Shindo film I’ve seen.

Keiko Oginome

A note on the title:

The film is frequently listed as ‘By Player’ in English, but I’m sure this was never an official release title. It’s also meaningless, and I can only assume that somebody somewhere came up with ‘bit player’ as a translation for ‘sanmon yakusha’ and somehow managed to confuse ‘bit’ with ‘by’.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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Chi to daiyamondo / 血とダイヤモンド (‘Blood and Diamonds’, 1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #256

Akira Takarada

A group of five criminals headed by Utsugi (Jun Tazaki) plan to steal diamonds worth 360 million yen in an armed robbery in Kobe, but when they make the attempt, they discover that another gang has had the same idea, and a shoot-out ensues. The other gang, headed by Koshiba (Makoto Sato), make off with the diamonds, but Koshiba is wounded by a gunshot in the process. They hide out in an abandoned garage while one gang member, Jiro (Tetsuo Ishidate), goes off to kidnap a young woman, Tsunako (Yuki Nakagawa), threatening to kill her unless her surgeon father (Takashi Shimura) operates on Koshiba. Meanwhile, both Utsugi’s gang and the police are on their trail, and private detective Kuroki (Akira Takarada) is following Koshiba’s girlfriend, Rie (Kumi Mizuno), in the hopes of getting the diamonds and selling them to the insurance company…

Kumi Mizuno

Like the previously-reviewed Brand of Evil from the same year, this is a co-production between Takarazuka Eiga and Toho. It’s also a similarly noir-ish vision featuring shadowy, high-contrast cinematography with lots of skewed angles, a cool jazz score and mostly unsympathetic characters. Strangely, this one also evokes memories of Reservoir Dogs, in this case because of its heist-gone-awry plot in which one gang member is shot and has to hole up in an abandoned building, together with a climax in which everyone’s pointing guns at each other. It seems highly unlikely that Tarantino could have seen either film before making his debut, though, so this is probably all pure coincidence.

Makoto Sato

In my view, this is a more satisfying film than Brand as it has a less convoluted plot and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It looks great thanks to cameraman Shinsaku Uno (who also shot Kihachi Okamoto’s splendid Aa bakudan), while jazz guitarist Shungo Sawada’s score sounds pretty good even if it’s not especially memorable. The acting is decent although a couple of the actors playing the more junior gang members go a bit OTT. I found Kumi Mizuno especially effective playing a woman not about to let any man get the better of her, and it’s great to see Takashi Shimura not wasted for a change – here, he has a substantial supporting part as the doctor losing confidence in his abilities because age is catching up with him. However, the top-billed star is Akira Takarada, who made his name playing the hero in the original Godzilla (1954). He was never very highly-rated as an actor, but actually acquits himself quite well cast against type as the private eye who’s little better than the criminals he’s pursuing. Makoto Sato, whose own limitations were sometimes exposed when playing a leading role, also gives a strong performance as the worst of the bad guys.

Takashi Shimura

The director, Jun Fukuda, was to become best-known for his monster movies such as Ebirah, Terror of the Deep (1966) and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) but is known to have despised the genre and seen it merely as a way to make a living. Working from an efficient original screenplay by Ei Ogawa and Moriyuki Mafuji, in this film he makes excellent use of real locations in a similar way to Hideo Gosha in movies such as Cash Calls Hell (1966), suggesting that Fukuda’s career could have gone quite differently had he started out a few years earlier.

Originally screened as a double feature with the previously-reviewed Naked Executive.

Watched with dodgy subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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