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Suzuki's early works include films based on pop songs,
porn and wild youth dramas. From 1956 to 1967
he made dozens of B-movie yakuza thrillers such as
Youth of the Beast (1963) and Tokyo
Drifter (1966), the last of which began to
subvert both the genre itself and the studio
system which employed him.
With Branded to
Kill (1967), featuring the
hamster-cheeked, Shishido Jo playing the
ultra-cool, rice sniffing
Yakuza No 3, Suzuki finally overstepped the mark
and was fired by Nikkatsu. For the next ten years he was actively
prevented from filmwork
and turned instead to making commercials, writing
and appearances on chat shows for a living.
In the early 80s however, thanks to his involvement with free-spirited producerArato
Genjiro, he made Zigeunerweisenin, and
Kagero-za, the first two installments of his wonderful
Taisho Trilogy. Unfortunately, at
the time of their release these films were never
properly distributed and originally had to be
shown in a portable
cinema and even then only in Tokyo!
Despite all this, Suzuki
has always had a small core of admirers in Japan
and overseas. His
audience was rewarded this
year with the release of the critically
acclaimed Pistol Opera, the sequel to Branded to
Kill.
Suzuki, a refreshingly unpretentious, modest and
self-deprecating man,
claims his films are only "entertainment". In
kabuki the three important
scenes are the love scene, murder scene and the
battle scene. In film
"these are the three ingredients of entertainment"
says Suzuki in an interview. In Kabuki both acting
and set design are highly stylized and
this comes to the fore in his films.
The "stylist
of Japano-trash", as
Stephen Teo calls him, is the influential
progenitor of Tarantino, Wong
Kar-wai, John Woo, Jim Jarmusch and a great number
of Japanese film-makers. The early films, like
the cheap ukiyo-e prints of the
19th Century Japan, are now celebrated for their
artistic worth as well visceral enjoyment.
There is a distinct "Suzuki Style" and it is
perhaps inimitable. There
is action, plenty of violence as well as violent
sex - in Gate of Flesh
(1964) and Story of a Prostiute (1965). He
was a keen experimenter and because he was working
on B-movies he had more
freedom than main-feature directors.
His style,
like Imamura Shohei's, is a repost to the
studio system. There is plenty of absurdist
humour and parody. His
tempo is quick. He plays with narrative sequences,
action is often
filmed in long takes and then left unresolved.
Tokyo Drifter (1966)
follows a threadbare logic and the story goes
haywire. Nevertherless, it
is thrilling and fun.
In the late 60s work his sets become more and more
outlandish. His black and white films are brightly
lit and high contrast. Bold "symbolic" colour
creates a strong mood and make his
films seem like Pop Art. Suzuki's use of colour is
his own. They look
good and the look, the stylized acting and the
overall tone is more
important than narrative. This is a good thing
since I am sure few of us are up on 60s yakuza
speak!
Western critics tend to celebrate the
"incomprehensible" movies of the
sixties while my Japanese friends prefer the
Taisho Trilogy. The
postcard published on the deepseijun.com
website also features these three
films, and they are really the centrepiece of this
retrospective too, at least for the first week.
This is partly due to the role of the Art Theatre
Guild the main
promoters of arthouse film in Japan. In a sense
Suzuki has been reinvernted as an arthouse director.
The three films are based on
Kyoka Izumi's tales of the unseen Japanese world of spirits.
Zigeunerweisen (1980), a prize winner at
the Berlin Film Festival in
1981, is a haunting, strange and grotesque film
which explores the theme
of identity in the rapidly modernizing Japan of
the 1920s. The Taisho
period is often seen as a brief interlude of
freedom and experiment
between more conservative times of the late Meiji
era and the coming
militarism of the 30s.
Yumeji (1993),
Suzuki's last major film until
Pistol Opera (2001), tells the story of
Takehisa Yumeji painter and
print maker who was something of a Taisho Utamaro.
The star in this role
is the popular singer Sawada Kenji (Julie). The
colours and designs are
sumptuous but are appropriately richly sober - shibui.
In these later art
films like the early Yakuza flicks the story is
less important than the
look and mood.
For years Suzuki's flims went unscreened and even
now very few are
available for video rental in Japan. I suspect
this will change in the
near future but until then this retrospective at
the Salon Cinema is a
rare chance to see some very amusing and
brilliantly crafted films.
The Suzuki Seijun Retrospective is showing at Salon Cinema October 20 - November 9.
Click here for more details
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