Tokyo Drifter (1966)

I understand why Tarantino and other people might like Tokyo Drifter (東京流れ者). It's a movie filled with style. Much of it takes place on what looks like a Vincente Minelli Hollywood movie set from the 1950s, and yet the genre is a kind of yakuza western. 

But this movie is style over substance. I honestly didn't know who was who half the time or what was going on. I liked the main character a lot. He's very cool. But this thing wore out my patience. 

Tokyo Drifter did, however, help me see how Suzuki got from the tight films noirs he was making in the 1950s to the surreal nationalist stuff he was making in the 1980s. Tokyo Drifter totally makes sense as something midway between the two.

This is another Nikkatsu crime caper, and it's in the Criterion Channel series Japanese Noir, though it is definitely not a noir.

Take Aim at the Police Van

Take Aim at the Police Van ('十三号待避線'より　その護送車を狙え) is playing as part of a series on the Criterion Channel called Nikkatsu Noir, and I couldn't resist watching one this week even though I have plenty of other stuff I'm supposed to be seeing for 2020. Suzuki's taut crime thriller did not disappoint. It's filmed just like a film noir from the Hollywood of the 1940s, and it is just as mysterious and fun. It's odd, though, the only Suzuki stuff I've seen is the late surrealist work (I only recently watched Zigeunerweisen), and so something like this was quite a delightful surprise. I kind of expect that I will watch every one of these Japanese noir films.

Zigeunerweisen (1980)

Zigeunerweisen (ツィゴイネルワイゼン) was weird, weird, weird. A kind of ghost story about the Taisho period and nostalgia for a Japan untroubled by the West. Maybe? Who knows. This was very strange and overly long.

I watched it with my unseen movie club. We did have a long discussion about what it was trying to do, but I am not sure any of us really liked it very much.