Classic Japanese Cinema Discussion Thread

Hi all,opening up Arrow's first Diamond Guys set to view the two out of the three films I've yet to see, I ended up discovering one of the most beautiful-looking Film Noir I've seen this year:

FTV:3: Red Pier (1958) 10



Treating the transfer with the same respect given to Seijun Suzuki’s work in the set, Arrow present an image which is crystal clear, a soundtrack that is clean and well-paced English subtitles.

Lifting a rich Film Noir atmosphere from the opening murder via crane, co-writer/(with Ichirô Ikeda) director Toshio Masuda & cinematographer Shinsaku Himeda unveil gorgeous stylisation in the crisp white clothes Tominaga lands in the port with reflected in pristine white lights lining every street and crashing against the waves, whilst subtly outlining the murky deals taking place under the pristine port. Hitting his targets with a mighty swagger, Masuda and Himeda give their loner bags of Film Noir chic spun from off-kilter camera angles curling round to follow Tominaga make his escape, and fluid, hand-held camera moves following each punch Tominaga offers up.

Taking the basic outline of Julien Duvivier’s classic Pépé le Moko (1937) (a Film Noir loner flees to the outskirts to avoid the cops) the screenplay by Masuda and Ikeda brilliantly draw up the sketch to comment on the youthful Post-WWII era of Japan, by having Tominaga be one of the new “water trade” (a black market many people worked in to survive during the aftermath of losing the war) gangsters, who is a free-wheeling loner who does not follow the pre-WWII codes of “loyalty” the underworld lived by. Smoothly crossing Film Noir with the popular “Sun-Tribe”/Zoku genre, the writers hits the early sugar rush of the French New Wave by Tominaga (played by a wonderfully dashing and slick Yûjirô Ishihara) being unable to let his secret love Keiko Sugita (a very good Mie Kitahara) cross his personal space, as a harmonica plays music from the heart of Tominaga across the red pier.