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Tracing the trajectory of stolen diamonds from sewer brick to hood's stomach to mannequin's plaster bosom, the Seijun Suzuki surrealism is already in full sway. The Grisbi tough-guy nostalgia sets the mood, then a jibe at Ikiru is introduced along with the lone-wolf brooder (Michitaro Mizushima), who shushes a jitterbugging joint with an old tune at the jukebox. Just out of the joint, he plans to sell the loot as a way to pay back the pal (Hideaki Nitani) who took a bullet for him and now hobbles on his one good leg. The deal is botched, the friend swallows the gems and leaps off a rooftop, the police shrug it all off as an accident but the big boss (Toru Abe) is ready to do some slicing to recover the gems. Up the crematorium chimney and down the carbon chute for the glittering MacGuffin, "they are charcoal, after all." The technique is positively classical next to the later disjunctions, though Suzuki unmistakably displays the agitator's rejection of aestheticism—the slimiest character turns out to be the sculptor (Hiroshi Kondo) whose atelier, stocked with poles peskily positioned between the camera and the nude models, cloaks greed in artistry. Despite macho noir strains, it's the underworld beauty of the dead man's sister (Mari Shiraki) that gives the tale a jangly center and, perhaps, a tough moral barometer. At first, she mourns her brother's death but wipes away her tears when an American soldier comes around looking for action. By the end, she's survived torture by Turkish bath and smacked the head gangster for his admiration of "the yakuza way." "What yakuza way? It's wrong to kill, you idiot!" In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |