The Warped Ones (Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960)

Tamio Kawaji in The Warped Ones

Akira: Tamio Kawaji
Yuki: Yuko Chiyo
Masaru: Eiji Go
Kashiwagi: Hiroyuki Nagato
Fumiko: Noriko Matsumoto
Shinji Kumaki: Kojiro Kusanagi
Gill: Chico Roland
Yuki's Mother: Chigusa Takayama
Neighbor: Reiko Arai
Woman in Atelier: Yoko Kosono

Director: Koreyoshi Kurahara
Screenplay: Nobuo Yamada
Cinematography: Yoshio Mamiya
Production design: Kazuhiko Chiba
Film editing: Akira Suzuki
Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

The TCM programmer who scheduled Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones right after Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) evidently has a dark sense of humor. Both are fine examples of movies about people doing bad things and getting away with it. Funny Games ends with its mass murderer smirking at the camera, and while the bad-boy protagonist of The Warped Ones doesn't get away with murder, since as far as we know he hasn't committed one, he does get away with rape, theft, and assault. The film ends with Akira and his prostitute friend, Fumiko, laughing it up at an abortion clinic, amused that they are there with the virtuous Kashiwagi and Yuki because the former has impregnated Fumiko and the latter is pregnant with Akira's child. The Warped Ones belongs to a genre known as taiyozoku, or "Sun Tribe" films, portrayals of the undisciplined youth of postwar Japan. Among them are movies like Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit (1956) and three released the same year as The Warped Ones, Nagisa Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth and The Sun's Burial and Masahiro Shinoda's Youth in Fury. But even hard-edged directors like Oshima and Shinoda couldn't resist putting a moral spin on their portraits of wayward youth. Kurahara could, and The Warped Ones is all the more fascinating for its willingness to see the world the way Akira sees it. Tamio Kawaji gives an amazing over-the-top performance in the role, never quite standing still for a moment. He doesn't walk, he dances, prances, skips, and contorts, and Yoshio Mamiya's camera swirls and jogs along with him, ever restless, ever kinetic. Even in closeups his face is constantly in motion, often with a cigarette stuck between his lip and teeth or in the corner of his mouth. He is the embodiment of a certain kind of existential freedom, so self-centered that he refuses, unlike his friend, Masaru, to join a gang that might multiply his opportunities for mayhem. The only thing on Earth to which he pays obeisance is jazz, provided by Toshiro Mayuzumi's score. But even without punishing Akira for his considerable crimes, the film manages to make the point that he's no role model. Instead, he's an object lesson in the impossibility of achieving pure freedom.   

A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967)

Joe Shishido in A Colt Is My Passport

Shuji Kamimura: Joe Shishido
Shun Shiozaki: Jerry Fujio
Mina: Chitose Kobayashi
Shimazu's Successor: Ryotaro Suji
Shimazu: Kanjuro Arashi
Funaki: Shoki Fukae
Senzaki: Eimei Esumi
Kaneko: Jun Hongo
Miyoshi: Akio Miyabe
Otatsu: Toyoko Takechi
Otawara: Takamaru Sasaki
Tsugawa: Asao Uchida
Apartment Receptionist: Zeko Nakamura
Hit Man: Kojiro Kusanagi
Barge Captain: Zenji Yamada

Director: Takashi Nomura
Screenplay: Hideichi Nagahara, Nobuo Yamada
Based on a novel by Shenji Fujiwara
Cinematography: Shigeyoshi Mine
Production design: Toshiyuki Matsui
Film editing: Akira Suzuki
Music: Harumi Ibe

I didn't see any Colts in A Colt Is My Passport, but there are several rifles, pistols, and shotguns, some dynamite, and the protagonist carries a Beretta, so I suspect the title is a bit of poetic license designed to make the Japanese gangster into the equivalent of the gunfighter of the American Wild West. Harumi Ibe's music score, with its guitar, harmonica, and whistler evoking Ennio Morricone's scores for Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns, seems designed for the same effect. But why court comparisons? The Japanese gangster movie is its own well-defined genre, and Joe Shishido is its superstar. In A Colt Is My Passport he's Shuji, a hit man hired to off a crooked businessman, which he does with cool efficiency. Unfortunately, the guys who hired him immediately turn against Shuji, so he's soon on the run, along with his sidekick, Shun, played by the Anglo-Japanese actor and singer Jerry Fujio. (Fujio even gets to croon a ballad at one point in the movie, slowing down the otherwise non-stop action.) The movie is filled with James Bond-like gadgets and car chases: At one point, Shuji and Sun find themselves kidnapped and thrown into the back seat of a car that they have had rigged with an extra braking system, apparently just in case they find themselves in such a predicament. Engaging the brake causes the car to skid, throwing the bad guys into the windshield and knocking them out. And so it goes until Shun is captured and beaten to a pulp, whereupon Shuji bargains with the bad guys, giving himself up to them so Shun and the pretty motel waitress Mina, who has helped them, can escape. Apparently the bad guys trust Shuji enough that he has time to work on a way of defeating them: He rigs up some booby traps for the showdown they have arranged on a landfill, and the movie ends with Shuji staggering away from the carnage. It's all great fun in that peculiarly heartless and mindless way that such thrillers have.

With Beauty and Sorrow (Masahiro Shinoda, 1965)

Mariko Kaga in With Beauty and Sorrow

Otoko Ueno: Kaoru Yachigusa
Keiko Sakami: Mariko Kaga
Toshio Oki: So Yamamura
Taichiro Oki: Kei Yamamoto
Fumiko Oki: Misako Watanabe
Otoko's Mother: Haruko Sugimura

Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Screenplay: Nobuo Yamada
Based on a novel by Yasunari Kawabata
Cinematography: Masao Kosugi
Art direction: Junichi Osumi
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Toru Takemitsu

Some mannered acting and stagy blocking mars Masahiro Shinoda's otherwise involving With Beauty and Sorrow, a revenge drama that doesn't quite transcend its genre. Toshio Oki, a womanizing novelist whose wife just barely puts up with his extramarital exploits, once had an affair with the young artist Otoko Ueno. She became pregnant but lost the baby at birth, and suffered severe psychological trauma. Now she lives with a young woman, Keiko, her student and her lover. Otoko has recovered her emotional stability, and even agrees to meet Oki when he telephones her on a visit to Kyoto, sending Keiko to his hotel to take him to the restaurant where they will reunite. But Keiko is, as even Otoko suggests, a little "crazy," and after the meeting begins to plot ways to bring about her lover's revenge on Oki. Eventually, this involves Keiko's seducing not only Oki but also his son, Taichiro, a graduate student of medieval Japanese history, with predictably disastrous consequences. Old pro So Yamamura is excellent as Oki, and it's good to see the great Haruko Sugimura, veteran of many films by Shinoda's mentor, Yasujiro Ozu, in the small part of Otoko's mother. But the younger actors, particularly Mariko Kaga as Keiko and Kei Yamamoto as Taichiro, turn what might have been an affecting portrayal of doomed characters into melodrama. The film benefits from Toru Takemitsu's score, though it sometimes feels a bit at odds with the soap-operatic events on screen.