A 14-year-old boy climbs to Amagi pass in 1940 and an old man forty years later painfully climbs five floors of stairs to hire a printer for his memoirs. Their lives come together in the story of a murder of a wandering laborer at the tunnel at the top of the trail over Amagi. The … Continue reading Amagi Pass / Amagi goe (1983)
Seicho Matsumoto
Demon / Kichiku (1978)
Ken Ogata had been a major star on TV since the mid-sixties, usually playing samurai heroes. His occasional big-screen appearances had been in supporting roles, some fairly large but for the most part not particularly memorable. Then suddenly, in 1978-79 he catapulted to the position of one of Japanese film’s most highly regarded actors by … Continue reading Demon / Kichiku (1978)
Three Undelivered Letters / Haitatsu sarenai santsu no tegami (1978)
For me, as I assume for most people, the seventies in Japanese movie making were for a long time little more than a dark hole. Aside from Battles Without Honor, Lone Wolf and Cub, and some cult movies in the pinku violence sub-genre, not much was known outside Japan, and that was mostly known about … Continue reading Three Undelivered Letters / Haitatsu sarenai santsu no tegami (1978)
Village of Eight Gravestones / Yatsuhaka-mura (1977)
The detective Kindaichi movie revival begun by Ichikawa’s Inugami Family was quickly followed up by movies at several other studios, the most popular of which was Shochiku’s Village of Eight Gravestones. Tatsuya is called to a lawyer’s office where he is grilled to determine his true identity and then meets his long lost grandfather (on … Continue reading Village of Eight Gravestones / Yatsuhaka-mura (1977)
Beast in the Shadows / Edogawa Rampo no injû (1977)
One of the most unexpected and generally unknown aspects of Japanese movies in the seventies was the revival of the murder mystery as a top of the bill feature. That examples of this genre are all but unseen in Europe or America is no surprise, of course, since every nation produced plenty of those in … Continue reading Beast in the Shadows / Edogawa Rampo no injû (1977)
Castle of Sand / Suna no utsuwa (1974)
As in most countries, movies in Japan had often depicted police and criminals. However, the modern police procedural was still a very new idea in the seventies, with Castle of Sand possibly the first Japanese movie to follow a case from the police point of view in a step-by-step investigation process such as might actually … Continue reading Castle of Sand / Suna no utsuwa (1974)
Shadow of Deception / Naikai no wa (1971)
Like so many of the movies adapted from other mystery novels by Seicho Matsumoto, Shadow of Deception observes and reports in detail but leaves us wondering exactly what happened, even after we see it happen. Minako (Shima Iwashita) is in the middle of an affair with Shuzo (Akira Nakao). He is an archeologist preparing his … Continue reading Shadow of Deception / Naikai no wa (1971)
Shadow Within / Kage no kuruma (1970)
A man (Go Kato) sees a beautiful woman (Shima Iwashita) on a crowded bus, and she reminds him of a girl he knew in high school. He speaks to her and she recognizes him. She is a now a widow, selling insurance for a living, but he is married to a woman who is as … Continue reading Shadow Within / Kage no kuruma (1970)
Zero Focus / Zero no shoten (1961)
One week after her marriage, a young wife sees her new husband off on the train, supposedly to wrap up business at a branch office of his ad agency before moving permanently to Tokyo. He never returns and she sets out to find him. Before she's done, she uncovers a web of secrets and murder … Continue reading Zero Focus / Zero no shoten (1961)
Directors and Their Muses
Every nation’s film history shows some fruitful long-term collaborations of certain actors and directors. John Ford and John Wayne, for example, leap immediately to mind for Americans, or Scorcese and de Niro. When this pairing is linked to a director who also writes, it often produces some of their most personal and often best films … Continue reading Directors and Their Muses