February 25, 2004
Japanese Video Night Part II: "Branded to Kill"
"Branded to Kill" is a stylish, inventive and thoroughly modern piece of '60s Japanese noir, at turns sexy and psychologicaly creepy. It's also one of the most influential Japanese films ever made. Released in 1967 and directed by Seijun Suzuki, "Branded to Kill" ("Koroshi no Rakuin" in Japanese) is the story of a yakuza hitman and his battle to stay alive after he botches a job and finds himself in the cross hairs of another hitman's rifle.
"Branded to Kill" is a stylish, inventive and thoroughly modern piece of '60s Japanese noir, at turns sexy and psychologicaly creepy. It's also one of the most influential Japanese films ever made.
Released in 1967 and directed by Seijun Suzuki, "Branded to Kill" ("Koroshi no Rakuin" in Japanese) is the story of a yakuza hitman and his battle to stay alive after he botches a job and finds himself in the cross hairs of another hitman's rifle.
Jo Shishido stars as "No. 3 Killer." After he misses hitting his assigned target (a butterfly lands on his rifle, blocking his telescope), the mysterious and higher-ranking "No. 1 Killer" is sent to rub him out.
Meanwhile, the even more mysterious client who ordered the failed assassination attempt, a woman named Misako (played by Annu Mari), becomes the object of No. 3's obsessive and unrequited love.
With what is one of the most memorable character traits imagineable, No. 3 is a hitman with a peculiar fetish--he is aroused and comforted by the smell of boiled rice. The quirk is a symbolic cultural touch to Suzuki's film, as rice is a staple of almost every Japanese meal. The underlying pathology of the bizarre fetish is never explained, but it not only puts a Japanese stamp on the movie, it adds another droll layer.
Elements of the film's script and style are similar to that of French new wave of Jean-Luc Godard. Suzuki's aesthetic in "Branded" most closely echoes the noir of Godard's "Alphaville." There's also a subtle sense of humor to the film in the way it mocks and hyper-emphasizes the sillier conventions of the B-movie gangster genre. The film's comic touches has the kind of detached spy-versus-spy humor found in certain episodes of '60s British cult television series "The Prisoner" (as does its use of agents with numbers for names).
Testament to "Branded"'s influence can be seen most recently in the Jim Jarmusch film "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," a modern hip-hop-mafia take on gang loyalty and honor. Jarmusch pays homage to Suzuki by copying a clever scene in which the hitman kills his target by shooting his gun through the plumbing connected to a sink. When the mark goes to the sink to wash up, No. 3 fires into the water pipe and cuts his victim down.
It's worth noting that Seijun Suzuki is a director whose best films have been more widely celebrated decades after they were made than at the time of theatrical release. "Branded to Kill" marked his last major film as an in-house director at Nikkatsu movie studios, as well as the end of his prime as a filmmaker.
With nearly fifty films to his credit, the once obscure Suzuki has now been aknowledged as an exceptionally innovative filmmaker, especially in the West. Though he has directed and acted in a handful of films during the past three decades, his greatest cinematic achievement is the modern yakuza pulp flick of the 1960s.
What makes "Branded" and other Suzuki films from the era so remarkable was that they were produced as B-movies with limited resources and under a factory-like studio production system that rolled out celluloid schlock the same way Toyota rolls out compact cars. When Suzuki turned in "Branded to Kill," he was fired from Nikkatsu for making a film deemed too confusing for audiences.
But Suzuki wasn't trying so much to cut an artistic path as much as create compelling and original pulp fiction within the constraints of an exhausted film genre. On films such as "Branded" and "Tokyo Drifter"," Suzuki invariably was assigned film projects and told which scripts and actors he'd have to use. It's amazing that "Branded to Kill" could be made under such conditions. But in Suzuki's hands, an otherwise pedestrian production was turned into a film with a refreshingly modern twist bordering on the avant-garde.
On the new DVD by Criterion there's an interview with an elderly, white-haired Suzuki. (Suzuki is now in his eighties.) Despite his advanced age, the director is spry, lucid and engaging as he gives a first-hand backgrounder on his filmmaking years and the making of "Branded to Kill." It's must-see viewing for cineastes.
-- Jay Han + Ivan Corsa
RELATED LINKS
Biography: Seijun Suzuki [MSN Entertainment]
Reviews - "Tokyo Drifter" and "Branded to Kill" [Deep Focus]
Seijun Suzuki Filmography [New York Times]
Branded to Kill Review [All Movie Guide / NY Times]
Essay - Branded to Kill by John Zorn
Interview - Suzuki Seijun [Midnight Eye]
Essay - Seijun Suzuki: Authority in the Minority by Stephen Teo
Posted by Robsam at February 25, 2004 12:20 AM
