Arts Listings
‘Nikkatsu Noir’ Presents Darker Side of Japanese Cinema
If you haven’t gotten your fix from this year’s Noir City festival at San Francisco’s Castro Theater, rest assured—a whole world of dark, depraved cinema awaits on DVD.
The Criterion Collection has done its part, recently adding to the collective home-video library of lesser-known classics a set of five Japanese crime thrillers from the 1950s and ’60s. Nikkatsu Noir, part of Criterion’s Eclipse series of neglected films, shines a light on a series of kinetic potboiler masterpieces churned out by the venerable Japanese studio for the benefit of an increasingly Westernized young, post-war audience.
With titles such as Cruel Gun Story, A Colt Is My Passport and Rusty Knife, it’s a collection guaranteed to provide a full dose of pulp.
The set begins with I Am Waiting (1957), in which Yujiro Ishihara plays a former boxer whose affection for a golden-voiced runaway moll drags him into the criminal underworld. The tone is set right away with imagery borrowed from the American noir films of the 1940s: Train tracks, a dim harbor and a trestle bridge denote a downscale section of town as a man steps out of a shabby, roadside diner to the strains of a jazzy score. A foghorn tolls as the man’s footsteps echo across wet pavement on his way to post a letter. The shadows of fences stream across the back of his trenchcoat as he wanders through the nightime streets until he encounters a mysterious woman standing alone on the docks, likewise clad in a trenchcoat with a sort of feminine fedora shading half her face. He offers a cigarette.
Soon we learn that the man is marking time, waiting for word from his brother and, with it, passage to an eden that lies just out of reach. In this case it’s Brazil, but it doesn’t matter—that letter will never arrive, and South America is only a symbol of a life never lived. The woman, too, is seeking escape, but there is no safe passage for either of them, no escape from the bonds of the corrupt world into which they were born. They will fight it as long as they can, and there may be a few minor victories along the way, but when the climactic brawl explodes on a cabaret dance floor, illuminated from below by glowing tiles, the fatalistic tragedy will consume them, even as a deft left hook sends a gangster’s briefcase full of cash sailing through the air, showering soiled currency over the bodies of the dead.
Take Aim at the Police Van (1960) likewise immerses the viewer in the netherworld of noir right from the get-go. A nameless, faceless gangster affectionately strokes his gun in anticipation of the violence to come, and then the credits start, superimposed on a lengthy traveling shot seen from the front of the eponymous vehicle, its headlights illuminating just enough of the road to leave us guessing as to what lies ahead. Road signs viewed through the gangster’s gunsight warn us of imminent danger.
Finally the violence explodes as the van is fired upon. Several prisoners die, but one survives. The accompanying guard takes the heat and faces suspension, but uses his mandatory time off to unravel the mystery of who wanted his charges dead.
What follows is one man’s lonely journey through a maze of shady dealings, nefarious characters and dank, dreary modernity.
