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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The Blue Beast / 青い野獣 / Aoi yaju (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #140

Tatsuya Nakadai

Yasuhiko Kuroki (Tatsuya Nakadai) is an ambitious young man working for a magazine publishing company run by Ogawa (Jun Tazaki). When a pay dispute breaks out, the union calls a strike and Kuroki serves as a spokesman for the workers. However, he’s actually a mole working for the management, who are paying him in exchange for inside information. 

Ichiro Nakatani

 

Keiko Awaji

Going for a drink with fellow union member Goda (Ichiro Nakatani), Kuroki is surprised to find his old flame from his student days, Yoshie (Keiko Awaji), working at the bar. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other for 6 years and their former passion is soon rekindled, but Kuroki is unaware that Goda has become suspicious and asked Yoshie to keep an eye on him. 

Yatsuko Tan'ami

 

Meanwhile, Kuroki has been having an affair with Ogawa’s wife, Yoriko (Yatsuko Tan’ami), whom he was hired to tutor part-time while still a student. She had used her influence on her husband to get Kuroki his job, but now she’s just in his way, so he breaks it off by telling her in brutal fashion that she’s too old to be attractive any longer. 

Yoko Tsukasa

 

Koreya Senda

Kuroki next sets his sights on Fumiko (Yoko Tsukasa), the daughter of powerful financier Eto (played by Nakadai’s real-life mentor, Koreya Senda). He knows that if he can get Fumiko to marry him, he’ll be made for life… 

Keiko Awaji and Nakadai

 

Yasuhiko Kuroki is an amoral social climber in the tradition of Stendhal’s Julien Sorel in his 1830 novel The Red and the Black, Dreiser’s Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy (upon which the 1951 film A Place in the Sun starring Montgomery Clift was based), and especially John Braine’s Joe Lampton in Room at the Top, filmed in 1958 with Laurence Harvey as Joe. That film was released in Japan in July of 1959, and very likely inspired this one as the similarities are obvious, although the two films end quite differently.

 

The Blue Beast, a Toho production, was written by Yoshio Shirasaka, who wrote a number of films for Yasuzo Masumura, but – more significantly – had also written the screenplay for  The Beast Must Die (1959), in which Nakadai had starred as a similar (though more deadly) antihero. Although the ending of that film seemed to leave things wide open for a sequel, it also called for location shooting in a foreign country, which is probably why it never happened. I’m unsure of the significance of the colour blue, but it seems highly likely that the inclusion of the word ‘beast’ in the title here was intended to tell audiences that this was their opportunity to see Nakadai being... well, 'beastly' again (especially to women).

 

For Nakadai, this was the first of four collaborations with director Hiromichi Horikawa, but it’s not as good as the other one I’ve seen, Shiro to kuro (1963), and it’s also less interesting than The Beast Must Die. It feels rather oddly lacking dramatically, partly because it unfolds all too predictably, but also because – unlike Julien Sorel, Clyde Griffiths and Joe Lampton – Yasuhiko Kuroki lacks anything resembling a sympathetic side. He’s a pretty one-dimensional character, really, and that’s also probably why Nakadai’s not at the top of his game here. Sei Ikeno’s soundtrack, which prominently features the vibraphone and recalls the Modern Jazz Quartet, may also have been too mellow a choice for this type of drama. 

 Thanks to A.K.

Gero no kubi /下郎の首 /'Gero's Head' (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #46

Michiko Saga and Jun Tazaki

 

Writer-director Daisuke Ito’s remake of his own 1927 film Gero (since lost) is a period drama (or jidaigeki) made for Shintoho.[1] Jun Tazaki stars as Geru, a manservant whose master (Minoru Takada) is killed as a result of an argument during a game of go. Geru was fishing with the master’s adult son, Shintaro (Akihiko Katayama), at the time of the incident. By the time they return, the unnamed killer (Eitaro Ozawa) has fled the scene, but they learn that he has nine moles on his face. Geru and Shintaro set off on a quest to find the murderer, but Shintaro falls ill and Geru is forced to become a busker, performing spear dances to support them both. 

Eitaro Ozawa

 

One day, sheltering from the rain outside a house, Geru is lent an umbrella by the inhabitant, Oichi (Michiko Saga, daughter of Isuzu Yamada and star of The Mad Fox), and a friendship develops when he comes to return it. Geru learns that Oichi is the concubine of a man named Sudo. During a later visit, Sudo unexpectedly returns and Geru is shocked to discover that he’s the man with nine moles on his face…

Jun Tazaki

 

In Japanese cinema history, Daisuke Ito – who made his first film in 1920 – is known as the father of the period drama, and there is no doubt that he was an innovative and hugely influential filmmaker. One of his few surviving silent films, Jirokichi the Rat (1931) remains impressive today. Geru no kubi is an extremely well-directed film in the way Ito stages his scenes, co-ordinates the actors, focuses on surprising details and uses dynamic crane and dolly shots combined with strong compositions and depth of field. Ito can be amazingly bold, too; in one scene during a voiceover, he fills the screen with a shot of a blank piece of paper and holds the shot for over two minutes! 

Akihiko Katayama

 

On the basis of this film and the other Ito works I’ve seen, in my opinion Ito’s weakness is that he sometimes either allows or encourages his actors to go over the top. There’s a running ‘gag’ here in which Gero’s legs go dead every time he has to kneel for a while, meaning that he’s unable to walk properly when he gets up. This clumsy slapstick is unfortunate in a film which is otherwise pretty sober in tone even if it lacks the depth to make it a true classic. However, the un-Hollywood like preference in Japanese cinema for a tragic ending is certainly well-catered to and comes after a grand climax in which we finally get a generous helping of chanbara (sword-fighting) action, albeit of the (presumably deliberately) clumsy variety.  

Koji Mitsui

 

Tetsuro Tanba

Also among the cast are the scene-stealing Koji Mitsui in a Lon Chaney-like role as a fake paraplegic beggar and Tetsuro Tanba as a passing samurai Geru and Shintaro manage to offend. The impressive cinematography is by Yoshimi Hirano, who also shot The Life of Oharu (1951). Jun Tazaki is decent enough in the lead, but a little lacking in star quality. However, the film's qualities far outweigh its flaws and Gero no kubi is a good example of why Daisuke Ito's work should be much better known than it is today.

Watched without subtitles.

Michiko Saga

 

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[1] The original was based on a story by one Tokichi Nakamura, who is for some reason uncredited on this version.