The ICA is doing a limited season of the films of the Japanese director Seijun Suzuki as a showcase for his most recent movie "Princess Raccoon" which I will be seeing later this week, despite some very offputting reviews. (I shall of course report on this soon). Anyhow the director has made two gangster films that I really reckon: "Tokyo Drifter" and "Branded to Kill", both of which are unusually quirky, and I thought I should try another of his rather enormous output. Hence my viewing the above film which is set in 1935. While I can't say that I was overly taken with it, I can understand others liking it. We have a high school student who, as is so often the case, looked like he was in his late twenties (as did his peers), who found that fighting -- or "scuffles" as the subtitles would have it -- was a good sublimation for sexual urges. On a broader level, this was probably some sort of parable for the growing militancy of Japan running up to World War II. He didn't get the girl, but he did find his manhood. I just don't know that this definition of being a man is the right one.
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Possibly an allegory on the militaristic nature of Japanese society in the early 20th
century (and, presumably, before that). The scene where the girl friend leaves in
the snow for a nunnery and is trampled by a number of squads of soldiers on a narrow lane, their only concern being to brush aside any obstacle including her, not only emphasises this but is a brilliant piece of cinematography.
The way in which the main character changes from timid and bullied to being a
bully was well done, don't you think?
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