Take Aim at the Police Van (Seijun Suzuki, 1960)

Misako Watanabe and Michitaro Mizushima in Take Aim at the Police Van

Cast: Michitaro Mizushima, Misako Watanabe, Shoichi Ozawa, Shinsuke Ashida, Mari Shiraki, Toru Abe. Screenplay: Shin'ichi Sekizawa, Kazuo Shimada. Cinematography: Shigeyoshi Mine. Production design: Takehara Sakeguchi. Film editing: Akira Suzuki. Music: Koichi Kawabe.

Seijun Suzuki's early-career Take Aim at the Police Van is a sold, somewhat overplotted excursion into the realms of film noir, but with none of the flash and dazzle of such later films as Story of a Prostitute (1965), Tokyo Drifter (1966), or Branded to Kill (1967). It's the story of Daijiro Tamon (Michitaro Mizushima), a prison guard who's on a bus transporting prisoners when it's attacked and two of the prisoners are shot dead. The attackers get away and Tamon gets suspended -- really scapegoated -- for his inability to stop them, so because he has nothing else to do he decides to figure out what was behind the assault. One of the prisoners who survived the attack, Goro (Shoichi Ozawa), was released on bail the day of the incident, and following up on some things Goro did and said on the bus, Tamon seeks him out. In the process, he winds up uncovering a human trafficking gang, gets slugged and chased a couple of times, and becomes involved with Yuko (Misako Watanabe), the noir "mystery woman" who has some connections to the traffickers. There's big thriller sequence in which Tamon and Yuko are tied up by the bad guys in a gasoline tanker truck that's sent rolling downhill with gas spilling out behind. The bad guys set the trail of gasoline alight and Tamon and Yuko have to free themselves before the burning gas reaches the truck and it explodes. I have to admit that this gimmick was spoiled for me by the TV series Mythbusters, on which Adam and Jamie demonstrated that a truck in that situation probably wouldn't explode, but I also wondered why, if the bad guys wanted to get rid of them, they didn't just kill them outright. But if you go questioning that sort of thing you'll never have any fun at the movies.

Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967)

Annu Mari and Joe Shishido in Branded to Kill

Cast: Joe Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari, Koji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Hiroshi Minami. Screenplay: Hachiro Guryu, Mitsutoshi Ishigami, Takeo Kimura, Chusei Sone, Atsushi Yamatoya. Cinematography: Kazue Nagatsuka. Art direction: Motozo Kawahara. Film editing: Akira Suzuki. Music: Naozumi Yamamoto.

Seijun Suzuki' s favorite leading man, chipmunk-cheeked Joe Shishido, plays a hitman who gets sexually charged by the smell of boiling rice. He also falls afoul of the yakuza and a mysterious woman who is fascinated by butterflies. And that's only the beginning of Suzuki's wildly fascinating cult film, which got the director fired from Nikkatsu Studios. Inspired in part by the James Bond movies, Suzuki's film has been cited as an influence on directors like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, but it's very much its own thing.

Fighting Elegy (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

Hideki Takahashi and Junko Asana in Fighting Elegy

Kiroku Nanbu: Hideki Takahashi
Michiko: Junko Asana
Turtle: Yusuke Kawazu
Takuan: Mitsuo Kataoka
Principal: Isao Tamagawa
Kaneda: Keisuke Noro
Ikki Kita: Hiroshi Midorigawa
Kiroku's Father: Seijiro Onda
Yoshino Nanbu: Chikaku Miyagi

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Screenplay: Kaneto Shindo
Based on a novel by Takashi Suzuki
Cinematography: Kenji Hagiwara
Production design: Takeo Kimura
Film editing: Mutsuo Tanji
Music: Naozumi Yamamoto

Seijun Suzuki's Fighting Elegy is a coming-of-age story, ostensibly about a hormone-crazed teenager who tries to sublimate his lust for the pretty Michiko and to expiate his Catholic guilt for that lust by joining one of the warring gangs in his town. But what's really coming of age, as we find out at the film's end, is the militaristic imperialism of prewar Japan. So much of the film depends on Suzuki's mastery of tone as he shifts from the mostly comic story of young Kiroku's plight to the wholly tragic outcome. Kiroku becomes increasingly adept as a fighter, and his rebellious antics at school are not punished so much as increasingly tolerated -- even his father refuses to punish him, taking a boys-will-be-boys attitude. When he's forced to go live with his uncle and transfer to another school, he only gets more bellicose, but although the school has a motto that stresses the necessity of "seemly" behavior, at the end of his stay there the principal is so impressed by Kiroku's fighting skills that he removes his coat and challenges Kiroku to a duel. The scene ends with the two squaring off, suggesting that part of the reason for the military's takeover lies in the older Japanese generation's admiration for the violence of the young. The film ends with Michiko going into a convent, but not before she is forced off of the path she is traveling by a troop of jogging soldiers and her crucifix is trodden into the snow, and with Kiroku on the train to Tokyo, where he plans to join the fight for control of the government. It's not clear from the film which side Kiroku will fight on this time, although the novel on which it's based has him joining the army and dying in China. Suzuki scripted this part of the novel and planned to film it as a sequel before he was forced out of his job at the Nikkatsu studios. Fighting Elegy is an exhibition of Suzuki's original and innovative technique, which audiences loved but studio management thought was out of control.

Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

Tomoko Hamakawa and Tamio Kawaji in Tokyo Drifter

Tetsuya (Tetsu the Phoenix) Hondo: Tetsuya Watari
Chiharu: Chieko Matsubara
Tatsuzo the Viper: Tamio Kawaji
Kurata: Ryuji Kita
Kenji Aizawa: Hideaki Nitani
Tanaka: Eiji Go
Mutsuko: Tomoko Hamakawa
Keiichi: Tsuyoshi Yoshida
Umetani: Isao Tamagawa
Otsuka: Eimei Esumi

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Screenplay: Yasunori Kawauchi
Cinematography: Shigeyoshi Mine
Production design: Takeo Kimura
Film editing: Shinya Inoue
Music: Hajime Kaburagi

Imagine if The Godfather had been made in the mid-1960s with someone like Frankie Avalon as Michael Corleone, interpolated pop songs ("An Offer He Can't Refuse," perhaps?), and sets in comic book colors that look like they were designed for a Freed Unit musical at MGM in the 1950s. Then you have something like Tokyo Drifter, a jaw-dropping Japanese gangster movie directed by the irrepressible Seijun Suzuki. There's no summarizing a plot that has so many wild excursions, but it basically follows the attempts of a young hitman who has his yakuza boss's approval to go straight -- or so he thinks, until the boss changes his mind. None of this suggests where the movie's going to go, including the shootout between Tetsuya and his almost Doppelgänger nemesis Tatsuzo on the railroad tracks with an approaching train in a snowstorm. Or the free-for-all fistfight in a bar designed to look like a saloon set for an American Western, during which the bar is almost completely demolished. For most of the film, including the train track shootout, Tetsuya wears a robin's egg blue suit with white shoes, though he later changes into other pastels. Those who find Tokyo Drifter a bit much (as the studio that employed Suzuki did) dismiss it as style over substance, but it's undeniably fascinating.

Story of a Prostitute (Seijun Suzuki, 1965)

Yumiko Nogawa in Story of a Prostitute

Harumi: Yumiko Nogawa
Shinkichi Mikami: Tamio Kawaji
Lt. Narita: Isao Tamagawa
Sgt. Akiyama: Shoichi Ozawa

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Screenplay: Hajime Takaiwa
Based on a story by Tajiro Tamura
Cinematography: Kazue Nagatsuka
Production design: Takeo Kimura
Film editing: Akira Suzuki
Music: Naozumi Yamamoto

Seijun Suzuki seems to have been a kind of Japanese Samuel Fuller, a director initially dismissed by critics as a maker of B-movies, but re-evaluated by a later generation as an auteur with a distinct and innovative style. Certainly Story of a Prostitute is loaded with style, including unabashed subjective camera tricks like the moment when the prostitute of the title, Harumi, sees the brutish Lt. Narita enter her room and freezes his image until it's torn to shreds like a paper doll. Harumi is a "comfort woman" at the front in Manchuria in the 1930s, and the lieutenant is especially taken with her. But she favors his gentle, even initially virginal orderly, Pvt. Mikami. The two fall in love, but Mikami has been so brainwashed by the Japanese army's code bushido-like code of loyalty and honor that he is trapped in a suicidal spiral. When he is wounded and trapped by the enemy, Harumi, who has pursued him behind the lines, persuades him not to kill himself as honor demands. But then he is rescued by his own forces, who suspect him of treason and propose a court-martial. His superiors decide that instead of court-martialing him, which would lead to a conviction that would dishonor his family, they will execute Mikami and report that he died in battle, but in a great scene, Mikami insists on looking his would-be executioner in the eye, and the man refuses to follow through. Eventually, however, he chooses suicide and Harumi, who has procured a grenade for Mikami, who has told her he's going to use it to escape, dies with him. It's a rather florid and sometimes confusing wartime melodrama, but Suzuki transforms it into an effective statement about the absurdity of war and the foolish codes of militarism.