Noirvember: Discovering Japanese Noir by Marya E. Gates ( @oldfilmsflicker)
As many Tumblr users know every year the month of November becomes #Noirvember. After celebrating by myself the first year (though I did ask Tumblr to join me), the tradition is now in its 8th year and it’s exciting to see how far its grown!
Over the years I’ve seen hundreds of films from the traditional noir cycle in U.S. cinema (roughly 1941 - 1958), but for the last few years I had promised my friend Tyler (aka @filminfilm) I would give Japanese noir a chance (especially the Nikkatsu Noir set that @criterioncollection put out a few years back). Thankfully, last year the launch of FilmStruck coincided with Noirvember and I could finally make good on my promise!
While I watched more than just the following films, these are the ones that have really stuck with me a year later. Some of these films were made concurrently with the U.S. noir cycle, and some of them are decidedly neo-noir (looking at you Seijun Suzuki, you wild man you)
DRUNKEN ANGEL, 1948 (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
This film brings frequent Kurosawa collaborators Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune together to the seedy underworld of post-war Japan. Mifune plays a small time crook who bonds with a jaded physician after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. It’s bloody, it’s brooding, and it’s about as noir as you can get.
STRAY DOG, 1949 (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune join forces again, this time on the right side of the law in one of cinema’s first buddy-cop films (this is no comedy however). After rookie cop Murakami (Mifune)’s Colt pistol is stolen during a blistering heat wave, veteran detective Satō (Shimura) joins him to solve a crime in which it was used.
I AM WAITING, 1957 (dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara)
Quite possibly my favorite noir I watched all last year, this romantic noir finds two lonely souls, an ex-boxer and a nightclub singer (naturally), briefly connecting in a diner, before their mutual dream of love and contenment get crushed by a syndicate of gangsters.
TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN, 1960 (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
What can I even say about Seijun Suzuki that hasn’t already been said??? Suzuki had previously made pop song films and the occasional Yakuza films for Nikkatsu before this twisty whodunit. After a guard is suspended when a prison truck is attacked and a convict inside murdered, he decides to take justice into his own hands.
CRUEL GUN STORY, 1964 (dir. Takumi Furukawa)
This was my first introduction to Joe Shishido aka ol’ chipmonk cheeks (not pictured). Shishido was tired of being cast in melodramas because of his handsome looks, so he had cheek augmentation surgery in 1957 and began to make crime films. He certainly has a flare for them. In this film he plays ex-convict Togawa who upon release from prison is roped into helping a seedy mob boss with an armored car robbery.
PALE FLOWER, 1964 (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)
Director Masahiro Shinoda was inspired by French poet Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal for this lyrics Yakuza pic. After being released from prison hitman Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) gets entangled in a mutually destructive relationship with a seductive gambling addict named Saeko (Mariko Kaga).
TOKYO DRIFTER, 1966 (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
While most of this film is in color I felt like I needed to use this shot from the black-and-white opening sequence because it’s a clear influence on Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (’92). With a jazzy score and a plot that is so twisty you need a roadmap to follow it, this film from Seijun Suzuki follows Tetsuya Watari as he becomes a hunted drifter after his Yakuza gang deactivates and he turn he turns down the leader of a rival gang’s invitation to join them.
A COLT IS MY PASSPORT, 1967 (dir. Takashi Nomura)
Featuring a spaghetti-western-style score, this hardboiled film follows a hitman (Joe Shishido, again), who is torn between two rival gangs. Shishido said of the nearly 170 films he made for Nikkatsu, this remains one of his personal favorites.
BRANDED TO KILL, 1967 (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
What the heck even is this film. People get shot by arrows. A Yakuza assassin (yet again played by Joe Shishido) has a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (no really). This is Seijun Suzuki at his bonkers best, combing the hardboiled elements of noir with 1960s pop-art aesthetics. Nikkatsu was so unhappy with the final product that Suzuki was blacklisted and didn’t make another film for ten years. How wrong could they have been???
You can find a list of all the noir and neo-noir available on FilmStruck here.
