FFWD Weekly
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Video by FFWD Staff In the ’50s and ’60s, Seijun Suzuki was one of many production line directors at Nikkatsu Studios in Tokyo, churning out sexual exploitation movies and hip yakuza gangster films at the rate of about three or four pictures per year. In the 12 years he worked for Nikkatsu he directed 42 films, but unlike many of his colleagues, Suzuki seemed to thrive in this atmosphere of relentless production schedules and extreme creative challenges. Constantly struggling to invest b-grade entertainment with esthetic value, Suzuki rewrote inadequate scripts and denied predictability in daring films that pushed well beyond the limitations of whatever genre he happened to be reinventing at the moment. Unfortunately, Suzuki’s skewed artistic vision was shared by few at the studio, especially those in positions of authority, and, in 1967, he was fired and blacklisted for making an incendiary parody of gangster films, Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin). Even though he eventually resumed his career in the late ’70s, it has taken the better part of 30 years for Suzuki’s reputation to be thoroughly salvaged. Finally we’re seeing the home video release of a number of films from Suzuki’s greatest period of creative endeavour at Nikkatsu (1964-67), allowing a renewed reverence for the exceptional talents of this once marginalized director. Gate of Flesh (1964) and Story of a Prostitute (1965) are specifically concerned with the dehumanizing effects of prostitution. Though these films depict prostitutes with very realistic characteristics and motivations, Suzuki never indulges insulting, "hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold" stereotypes. These are desperate but proud women forced by circumstances into selling their bodies, performing with dignity the tasks necessary to survive in a world indifferent to their troubles. In Gate of Flesh, five young prostitutes band together in an abandoned, bombed-out shell of a building, seeking protection in a collective. The brutality of their situation is only amplified by the abuses they inflict on any member of their group who violates their survivalist code and has sex with a man without accepting payment. When two of these women fall in love, one with the street hood who’s also taking refuge with them, the security of the group is threatened and retaliation is inevitable. Burgeoned by its implicit anti-Americanism, and propelled by Suzuki’s determination to display the worst of Tokyo street life in post-war Japan, Gate of Flesh is a grim parable of human desperation in an inhumane world. Similarly bleak and unsettling, Story of a Prostitute concerns the misery experienced by the comfort women who were shipped off to Northern China to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers stationed in Manchuria. Here, the brutal camp Adjutant claims one of these young women for his own, but she falls in love with his submissive orderly instead. Their illicit affair provokes her to try to convince the orderly to desert, but he’s ultimately too bound by his duty as a soldier and ends up facing a court martial. It’s a sad commentary on the value of honour in Japanese society and Suzuki’s satire is rarely as fittingly downbeat as in this film’s final apotheosis. On a somewhat lighter note, the yakuza gangster films by Suzuki explore similar themes in a much more irreverent fashion. Highly stylized and jammed with bizarre set pieces, Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded To Kill (1967) send up traditional Japanese values frame after frame. With weird existential protagonists suffering weird existential identity crises, it’s sometimes hard to tell if these films are a parody or a celebration of the themes of honour and betrayal that have become so familiar in gangster films of any origin. Ultimately, Branded To Kill almost ended Suzuki’s career and it’s not hard to see why. It’s the story of the third-rate hired killer in Japan, who bungles a job when a butterfly lands on his gun barrel. Number Three is soon plunged into a hired killer’s hell on earth, as he is stalked by the mysterious and ruthless Number One, who has been sent to eliminate Three for his recent gaffe. Three quickly loses all sense of reality, as depicted in a variety of surreal tableaux including a lot of butterflies, and he realizes that he cannot even trust the women who love him since everyone seems to be plotting his demise. Three’s cowardice in the face of death is a complete mockery of Japanese honour-based society. Add to this some extremely frank sex scenes, including a variety of visual gags at the expense of the Japanese film censors, and suddenly here’s a completely unmarketable film that everyone wants to see. No wonder the studio was a little irked.

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