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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Portrait of Chieko / 智恵子抄 / Chieko-sho (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #88

Shima Iwashita

This Shochiku production was based on a 1941 poetry collection of the same name by Kotaro Takamura (1883-1956) together with a 1957 novel entitled Shosetsu Chieko-sho by Haruo Sato, which were themselves based on the true story of Takamura’s wife, Chieko (1886-1938), a painter and feminist. The story begins in 1911, a time when it was fashionable among the upper-middle class of Japan to cultivate an interest in Western art. Painter and sculptor Kotaro Takamura (Tetsuro Tanba) has recently returned from studying in Paris when he agrees to take on a disciple, Chieko (Shima Iwashita). The two gradually fall in love and get married. Although both are from fairly wealthy families, their chosen occupation of art means they often struggle to get by. Nevertheless, for the following 20 years they are mostly happy and their love remains undiminished. Then an unexpected tragedy occurs, causing Chieko to receive a severe shock, in the wake of which she begins to act strangely. It soon becomes apparent that she is suffering from the onset of mental illness…

Shima Iwashita

 

By 1967, sentimental love stories of this sort were becoming a rarity in Japanese cinemas flooded with yakuza flicks and monster movies, but Shochiku must have felt confident enough in the popularity of this particular story to give it the green light – an earlier film had been made in 1957 starring Setsuko Hara and So Yamamura, while there had also been a TV series, a radio drama, a number of popular songs and various books and stage plays based on the lives of Kotaro and Chieko.

Tetsuro Tanba

 

I found the first hour of the film to be a rather bland, picture-postcard type of love story briefly enlivened by a moment of unintentional humour when an overly-earnest young artist slashes a painting to ribbons in a gallery, then jumps out the window Father Ted-style. However, it’s mostly a matter of watching Kotaro and Chieko being very happy together, which – let’s face it – is seldom the sort of thing to make for interesting viewing, so things improve dramatically (in both senses of the word) once events take a tragic turn. 

Shima Iwashita

 

The film’s greatest strength is the performances of Tetsuro Tanba and Shima Iwashita, who are both perfect in their roles, with Iwashita deservedly winning a couple of awards for her highly convincing performance in a challenging part, while Tanba is equally good in his less showy role. Although better known for her collaborations with her director husband, Masahiro Shinoda, this was actually one of ten films that Iwashita made for director Noboru Nakamura. The only other one of these I’ve seen is Koto (1963), a superior film to this one (in my opinion). 

Shima Iwashita

 

Portrait of Chieko was Japan’s entry for the year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar, but lost out to Jiri Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains. It’s hard to argue with the Academy’s choice because, although I found it on the whole to be a well-made and moving film, with decent music by Masaru Sato and cinematography by Hiroshi Takemura, in  my view it’s too calculated in its sentimentality to be a great film. The character of Taro ‘the Howling Dog’ (Tetsuo Ishidate), the village idiot constantly banging a tin in an attempt to summon his lost love, I could especially have lived without; the true story of Kotaro and Chieko is already more than sufficiently sad to satisfy the demands of the most avid tearjerker fan without resorting to such a crude device. 

Thanks to rarefilmm for making this available here.