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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Brand of Evil / 悪の紋章 / Aku no monsho (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #229

Tsutomu Yamazaki

 

Kikuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki, the kidnapper from High and Low) is a police detective investigating the murder of a young woman. The trail leads to company boss Shibata (Rokko Toura), but he suddenly finds himself falsely accused of accepting bribes from a drug dealer and is kicked out of the police force and sent to prison for two years. After his release, he manages to find work with a private detective agency on condition that he drops any notion of trying to clear his name. He agrees, then promptly sets about trying to clear his name, during the course of which he finds himself involved with Setsuko (Michiyo Aratama), a young woman he sees falling victim to a pickpocket on the subway…

 

Michiyo Aratama

This co-production between Toho and Takarazuka Eiga was based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Shinobu Hashimoto, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sakae Hirosawa and the director, Hiromichi Horikawa. Horikawa and Hashimoto had previously collaborated on The Lost Alibi (1960) and Shiro to kuro (1963), two similarly dark and twisty crime thrillers, and both had begun their film careers under the tutelage of Kurosawa. The master’s influence is apparent here in the way certain scenes are shot and the use of weather to heighten atmosphere. In fact, the moody high-contrast cinematography comes courtesy of Yuzuru Aizawa, who had shot The Bad Sleep Well (1960). Another asset is a strong jazz score by one of Japan’s top composers, Toshiro Mayuzumi, while the excellent cast also includes Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida, Keiji Sada and, wasted in a tiny role as the head of the detective agency, Takashi Shimura. 

 

Hashimoto’s view of the world tended towards the misanthropic, and none of the characters in Brand of Evil are terribly nice. In fact, one of the most memorable scenes involves the supposed hero torturing a hapless yakuza stooge to the strains of a Strauss waltz (‘Rosen aus dem Süden’), which reminded me of the way Tarantino used ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ in Reservoir Dogs, although Tarantino certainly took it to another level. 

 

Keiji Sada and Tsutomu Yamazaki

In my view, the film is slightly less effective than The Lost Alibi or Shiro to kuro because the combination of the lack of a sympathetic protagonist combined with a rather convoluted plot and slightly excessive running time of around two hours and eleven minutes makes it hard to feel emotionally invested in the story all the way to the end. It’s also hard to forgive the demeaning portrayal of a disabled character, Setsuko’s friend Tsuyako, played by Toshiko Yabuki. 

 

Rokko Toura