3 out of 5 stars

Dismissed in his day as a B-movie director and eventually dismissed, quite literally, by his bosses at Nikkatsu Studios, Seijun Suzuki has since been reappraised as one of the more relevant cinematic stylists of Japan’s cinema. So, it’s great that his films are beginning to resurface, nicely cleaned up for Blu-ray release by boutique marques like Radiance who are presenting two of his early works on one welcome disc.

The off-beat yakuza thriller Underworld Beauty was his seventh movie but is sometimes considered his feature debut as it was the first to use his professional moniker, having made his first half-dozen movies as Suzuki Seitarō. His distinctive and subversive style is already evident and the themes he will return to throughout his career are establishing themselves. He’d made his directorial debut two years earlier with a sort of yakuza musical, Victory is Ours (1956), his first foray into the burgeoning ‘Pop-Song-Movie’ genre of the 1950s which featured famous songs framed within stories inspired by their lyrics—think of them as epic cinematic pop videos where at some point the title song will be performed in its entirety. It’s a genre that Seijun Suzuki mastered, and the second title presented here, Love Letter is a superior example of the form.

Seijun Suzuki had an eventful wartime military service during which he survived two shipwrecks that left long-term psychological repercussions. When the war was over, he continued his college studies but after being rejected by Tokyo University, he enrolled on a film course at Kamakura Academy and was subsequently hired by Shochiku’s Ōfuna Studio as an assistant director where he regularly worked under Tsuruo Iwama. He later admitted his lack of enthusiasm for filmmaking during those first few years but when Nikkatsu began production again after their forced wartime hiatus he’d learned enough to join their writing stable and work as an assistant director for the likes of Hiroshi Noguchi who directed Suzuki’s first produced screenplay, Duel at Sunset / 落日の決闘 (1955). The following year, he graduated to director in his own right but would have little or no choice in what he was given by the studios.


Underworld Beauty (1958)

3 out of 5 stars

Released from prison, a gangster retrieves diamonds sought by fellow yakuza.

It’s not difficult to imagine the sort of formulaic script that was handed to Seijun Suzuki but, as is often the case with B-movies, the tight shooting schedule, meagre budget, and general lack of interest from studio executives also afforded the director some degree of creative freedom. We join the narrative as Miyamoto (Michitarô Mizushima) reacquaints himself with his yakuza gang after spending three years in prison following a bungled diamond heist. Starting with someone released from prison is such a well-worn device in crime movies because it drops the viewer into the heart of a narrative that is already up and running. Which is more than can be said for Miyamoto’s partner, Mihara (Tôru Abe), who was crippled in the robbery and now barely scrapes a living with his tiny street food stall.

It turns out that Miyamoto had stashed the stolen diamonds and asked his old boss, Ôyane (Shinsuke Ashida), for permission to give them to Mihara as compensation for the injury he feels responsible for. Surprisingly, Ôyane seems fine with the idea and even sets up a meeting with potential buyers. Predictably, the deal goes awry when masked men attempt to steal the stones during the transaction, but Mihara swallows them and throws himself off a roof. Now, Miyamoto feels obliged to look out for Mihara’s younger sister, Akiko (Mari Shiraki), as several factions are after the diamonds, assuming Akiko has them because she was one of the few who had access to her brother’s body at the morgue.

Instead of what could have become a tiresome concoction of clichés, Suzuki managed to give us something that still seems fresh and surprising. It is rewarding enough if approached as a straightforward noir with its deep structural contrasts, shootouts in the shadows, and plenty of suits and brimmed hats. All captured beautifully by the monochrome cinematography of Wataro Nakao, whom I assume was a studio technician as I can find no other credits for them.

Although Underworld Beauty is nowhere near as visually audacious as Suzuki’s later movies like Tokyo Drifter (1966), there is much joy to be found in its visual stylings and use of poetic imagery. Some of these serve the plot, while sometimes they seem to be there simply to amuse the astute viewer. For example, when Miyamoto returns to the underworld, he does so quite literally by lifting a manhole and descending into the sewers where he had hidden his gun along with the diamonds. Later, escaping from the underworld, Akiko will emerge from a coal bunker via a similar circular hatch—it could also be taken as a rebirth metaphor.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into things but there is a prominent scene among statuesque trees that dwarf the characters, and then key events play out among piles of coal, which is fossilised trees, and diamonds are the same carboniferous substance but densely compressed. The same material is changed into distinct forms by time and environmental factors, just as the characters are changed by time and events. It’s all to do with relationships of scale and the yakuza world is presented as a simplistic model of the wider society as Japan embraced post-war capitalism and money trumped honour in the underworld.

As a stylist, Suzuki can stand shoulder to shoulder with the revered directors of the French Nouvelle Vague such as Alain Resnais, albeit on a smaller scale aligned with B-movie resources. Like Resnais, he is interested in spatial perception of distance related to time, memory and character dynamics. He exploits the three-dimensionality of cityscapes and architectural interiors. Even when shooting on a featureless plain such as a large expanse of flat roof, he arranges figures to emphasise the distance between them using proportional perspective as they move and change the dynamics of the space.

He’s also interested in the camera penetrating divisions in space such as walls and floors. The camera will follow figures as they ascend open staircases from one floor to another within open-plan modernist buildings. Real architectural locations are edited together with studio sets allowing disconcerting viewpoints that would be impossible in the real building. So, we get an aerial view of two rooms as if the ceiling has become transparent to us. Exploring the wall as a metaphor for emotional and societal division, one shot shows us the captor on one side while the captive is on the other. Suzuki saw cinema not only as entertainment but also as a tool to break through these artificial divisions created by authoritarian power gradients. However, entertainment remained his prime focus.

Another popular genre in Japan was youth movies that tended to feature delinquent teens and rock and roll. It is clear that Susumu Saji wrote his screenplay with this in mind and intended the character of Akiko to appeal to youth movie fans. However, she is no longer a teenager and not really a delinquent. Actress Mari Shiraki was in her early twenties and though still a rebellious youth, Akiko appears to have a solid moral core, denouncing crime and admonishing those who use violence and intimidation. Suzuki turns the character around and subverts the intended romantic dynamic between her and Miyamoto into something more interesting and believable.

Michitarô Mizushima carries the lead role of Miyamoto with confidence and restraint. He is the classic strong stoic hero found in so many samurai and yakuza movies and provides a foil for Mari Shiraki who steals the show with her vivacious dynamic performance that challenges the gender stereotypes of 1950s Japan. Her brash lexis is often masculine, using slang and being unafraid to speak up for herself and question male dominance. Akiko is confident with her body and sexuality, working as a nude model for her artist boyfriend Arita (Hiroshi Kondô), she is also happy to allow American sailors to fund her binge drinking when drowning her sorrows after her brother’s death. In a few scenes, she is down to her underwear but rather than merely providing fan service, she manages to interrogate the male gaze. She may be the titular underworld beauty, but Akiko is far from the demure ladies and courtesans portrayed in the traditional genre of Japanese art known as ‘Beauty Painting’—she’s a modern girl in a modern movie.

JAPAN | 1959 | 87 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE


Love Letter (1959)

3 out of 5 stars

A nightclub manager is in love with his pianist. However, she has a ranger boyfriend who’s been permanently stationed in the mountain wilderness, so their only communication is by letter.

If it were in German or French and spread the same material across a couple of hours, Love Letter / ラブレター would no doubt be hailed as a tragi-romantic masterpiece and not so easily dismissed as a pulp film produced per a strict genre template. Pop-Song-Movies were crowd-pleasers in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s and were quite different to the promotional vehicles produced for Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, The Beatles, and the like. The formula stipulated that a popular song and its singer feature prominently and that the song be performed in its entirety at some crucial point. The story must be inspired by the song lyrics and reflect its sentiments, the score had to pick up on the tune, and the runtime was usually half-feature length. In this case, a perfectly paced 40 minutes.

Inevitably, Pop-Song-Movies were mostly set in the world of theatres and nightclubs, enabling singers and their songs to sit naturally within a narrative that quite often touched upon underworld themes as the yakuza influence was deeply entwined with clubs and casinos. So, Love Letter begins in a nightclub setting as a starscape opens into a vignette of Kozue (Hisako Tsukuba), a pianist, and tuxedo-clad singer (Frank Nagai). This scene segues into a montage of Kozue and Masao (Kyôsuke Machida) enjoying happy romantic moments together in an idyllic snowy mountainscape.

As the singer drives her home, we learn that Kozue fell in love with Masao two summers ago but they have not met since, keeping in touch with letters. The singer notes that Kozue’s playing was off, and she explains she is distracted because Masao’s letters have been less and less frequent and seem to have ceased. The singer confesses his love for Kozue but also sends her away to find out what has happened to her beloved, who she believes remained isolated in his mountain cabin while convalescing from an illness. “If you come back to the club,” the singer tells her, “come back to me.”

While ostensibly a romance, Love Letter is structured as a mystery thriller as Kozue travels alone to the mountains of Yamanouchi Onsen, a resort famous for its traditional inns and bathhouses. From there, she walks into the snowy mountains, a stark, lonely figure almost lost in the vast white expanse that externalises her emotional state. The cinematography handled by Isamu Kakita includes effective though ambitious crane and dolly shots that slide past trees, black against white that seem to keep perfect time with the score as if serving as musical notation. This is the kind of lyrical beauty that elevates Love Letter above what would be expected from such B-movie material.

When she finally reaches Masao’s cabin, the man reacts with shock and initially runs away. She follows and realises that he hasn’t immediately recognised her. As they try to recapture their feelings for each other from that idyllic summer, a deeper enigma is uncovered as both seem to be guarding an unspoken secret…

Again, Seijun Suzuki uses relationships within three-dimensional space to serve the narrative and convey changing emotions between characters. The camera seamlessly moves from level to level within the cabin, from interior to exterior where gradients in the land reflect changes in the power dynamics of interactions. In the nightclub scenes, there are fluid transitions as characters move from stage to dancefloor and from interior to street scenes, then up and down stairs to Kozue’s apartment where she will stand framed in its large modern window just as she had been framed by the leading of the mountain cabin’s window, reading a meaningful letter on both occasions while the connotations change with the circumstances. Suzuki’s confident visual literacy never veers into pretension and always adds visual pleasure while serving the storytelling.

The principal cast of three is also capable. Frank Nagai intelligently underplays his yearning though the poignant love ballad he finally sings may not have the same appeal it once commanded. The pairing of Kyôsuke Machida and Hisako Tsukuba is perfect. This was an early role for Machida when he was taking romantic leads before making his name as a go-to yakuza hardman—I enjoyed his performance as the staunchly loyal and honourable lieutenant to Oryū (Sumiko Fuji) in the Red Peony Gambler movie series. Hisako Tsukuba’s performance is finely nuanced and affecting but her later career would veer into an unexpected trajectory when she moved into producing films under the name of Chako van Leeuwen in the US with Roger Corman, notably the first three films in the Piranha sequence (1978–1995) where she discovered up-and-coming directors Joe Dante and James Cameron…

JAPAN | 1959 | 40 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE

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Limited Edtion Blu-ray Special Features:

  • NEW 4K restoration of the film by Nikkatsu Corporation. Beautifully done concerning the original textures and behaviour of cheap film stock, which sometimes seems to bleach out a little but adds to the atmosphere. The details are revealed, and the greyscale grading is impressively smooth. Likewise, the uncompressed mono PCM audio is crisp and effectively noiseless.
  • NEW interview with critic Mizuki Kodama (2024, 15 mins.) In which she briefly outlines the work of Seijun Suzuki before focusing on Underworld Beauty and its representations of Japanese society in the 1950s and how it subverts established gender roles, with particular attention to the physicality of Mari Shiraki’s performance and her work on Suzuki’s The Naked Woman and the Gun (1957) made immediately prior, in which she also starred with Michitarô Mizushima. She astutely recognises that Suzuki’s characters often display non-binary preferences, such as a-romantic and a-sexual, long before these entered mainstream discourse. Her style is academic yet accessible, and it’s a shame her time was limited to just 15 fascinating minutes.
  • Bonus feature: Seijun Suzuki’s Love Letter (1959, 40 mins.) See the review above.
  • Audio commentary on Love Letter by Suzuki biographer William Carroll (2024). In which he discusses the Pop-Song-Movie genre, quoting similar contemporary examples and mentioning half a dozen other movies with the same title, with Love Letter (1995) being a loose remake or at least a reinterpretation that shares its core themes and parallels the uses of location. He also makes many interesting observations regarding Suzuki’s use of camera and somewhat experimental editing, which the viewer readily accepts even though it breaks with scenic continuity. A well-researched and informative commentary… one wonders why he wasn’t brought in for the ‘main feature’.
  • Trailers.
  • Newly improved English subtitle translation.
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow.
  • Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Claudia Siefen-Leitich and an archival review of the film. Not available at the time of review.
  • Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.
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Cast & Crew

director: Seijun Suzuki.
writers: Susuma Saji (Underworld) • Takeo Matsuura (Love).
starring: Michitaro Mizushima, Mari Shiraki, Hideaki Nitani, Shinsuke Ashida, Kiroshi Kondo, Kaku Takashina & Toru Abe (Underworld) • Kyôsuke Machida, Frank Nagai, Hisako Tsukuba & Keisuke Yukioka (Love).