Pulp fiction, Japanese style

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Last month the Criterion Collection released Blu-ray editions of two quirky Japanese B-grade “yakuza” films from the Sixties that were box office disasters when they opened. The second of the pair even prompted the studio to fire the director, Seijun Suzuki, who had been under contract for over a decade grinding out low-budget genre pictures. Suzuki was blacklisted from making features for the next decade. However, the films eventually built a cult following and 30 years later premiered in the U.S., where they became critically acclaimed hits that have influenced several modern directors (notably Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch). Fans of “Kill Bill” will no doubt recognize numerous similarities borrowed from these films.

Both “Tokyo Drifter” (1966) and “Branded to Kill” (1967) themselves show a strong influence from the 1960s trends in British pop-art films (including the James Bond craze), French new wave, American B-movies, and more. They’re satiric CinemaScope time capsules of 1960s world culture, yet appear remarkably fresh in style, in some part due to the popularity of films from Tarantino, Robert Rodriquez, Christopher Nolan, the modern indie movement, the best of the comic-book action movie directors, and the current fad for “retro” looks. Both films demonstrate that strict logic and sense are not always necessary for movies to be fun.

Seijun Suzuki remarks in an interview included on the extras that he was not intending to make “art” films, just films that were entertaining while following the guidelines he was assigned. “Tokyo Drifter” has a typical plot about a gangster who wants to go straight, but of course an inevitable chain of circumstances won’t allow that to happen, but rather than join another gang he decides to become a free-lance drifter, getting revenge on his various adversaries through his almost super-human skills as a hit man.

Suzuki uses the plot as an opportunity to create a triumph of art design, color, lighting and camera framing, exploiting pop culture references with a panache of the early Jean-Luc Godard. Required to include a pop song in the soundtrack, Suzuki incorporates it into the character’s persona and repeats it to such an extent that it becomes a running gag. The hero’s girlfriend is a singer in a stylish nightclub, so we’re treated to a few songs that almost make this a gangster musical.

Picture quality on Criterion’s Blu-ray is excellent, with bright, rich colors and deep contrasts that make things pop out in the numerous night scenes without losing details. The opening black-and-white sequence, however, has a dopier high-contrast look that may have been intentional or may be due to processing or just Suzuki using up some outdated film stock (or all of the above). Audio quality of the mono soundtrack is also fine.

Bonus features include Criterion’s usual illustrated booklet with credits and an interesting critical essay, a new July 2011 HD interview with the director and assistant director, a 1997 interview with the director in SD and a trailer.

TOKYO DRIFTER on Blu-ray –  Movie: A-  /  Video: A   /  Audio: A   /  Extras: B

After “Tokyo Drifter” came out, Suzuki’s studio reduced his budgets, forcing him to shoot in black-and-white, but his dramatic use of the wide CinemaScope frame and carefully designed lighting contrasts is no less striking. The simple film noir plot of “Branded to Kill” follows a professional hit man obsessed with raising his ranking while balancing his relationships with two dangerous femme fatales (one of them his sex-hungry wife, the other a mysterious beauty with a death wish). He’s also got an erotic fetish about sniffing boiled rice, and there’s a diamond-smuggling ring that figures prominently, not to mention a butterfly. But Suzuki avoids wasting time with standard crime-film exposition. Instead he usually jumps right into action scenes without explaining things in advance, leaving the audience to figure out what is going on from the context and by absorbing details of the props and settings.

He uses even more jump-cuts and elliptical editing than in “Tokyo Drifter”, as well as occasional graphic designs sometimes superimposed over the image, resulting in an even more Godardian new wave feeling to the film. One critic described “Branded to Kill” as more like “a 91-minute trailer” that is “a delirious, absurdist deconstruction of the crime genre.” Often more challenging to follow than “Tokyo Drifter,” it’s also more audaciously provocative and wildly unexpected.

It was this film that so outraged Suzuki’s studio bosses as “incomprehensible” that they pulled it from distribution and promptly fired him. A modern viewer might interpret both films about independent-minded gangsters working for fatherly but traditional and ruthless mob bosses as metaphors for the director’s own relationship with his studio.

As usual, Criterion’s picture and sound quality are outstanding, with a film-like HD transfer. Extras again include new HD video interviews with the director, assistant director, and star, part of a 1997 interview with Suzuki in SD, a trailer, and an illustrated booklet with credits and critical essay.

BRANDED TO KILL on Blu-ray –  Movie: A   /  Video: A   /  Audio: A   /  Extras: B

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