Four Japanese films

Casa de Colón continues to surprise with free entertainment. This week, it hosted the Japanese Cinema Week of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, organised by Asociación de Cine Vértigo. This year’s edition — 21^st already! — is called NIKKATSU: El crepúsculo de los dioses. Volumen 1. As the name suggests, the programme featured production by Nikkatsu Corporation, with the obvious intent to present Vol. 2, etc. in the years to come. So I watched four (out of five) films in a hope to learn what “the twilight of the gods” was supposed to mean; I failed on that point.

Never mind that. Geishas, geta, sake (excessive consumption of), samurai, yakuza — whatever Japanese stereotype you can think of, you’ve got it. Apart from karaoke, which is probably saved for the next volumes. I loved it.

東京行進曲 / Tōkyō kōshinkyoku / Tokyo March

a film by Kenji Mizoguchi

Only a short (25 minutes or so) fragment of this silent movie survives, but to me it looks like a self-sufficient story. A Bollywoodesque plot with a happy, under the circumstances, ending.

The film’s refreshing brevity, sadly, was compensated for by a preceding “conference”, in fact an hour-and-a-half-long rambling monologue by a guy who should be banned from talking in public henceforth.

河内山宗俊 / Kōchiyama Sōshun / Priest of Darkness

a film by Sadao Yamanaka

Based on a 19^th-century Kabuki play, employing Kabuki aesthetics and Kabuki actors, this 1936 period drama starts slow, then ramps up. Spoiler: expect a lot of dead bodies.

月は上りぬ / Tsuki wa noborinu / The Moon Has Risen

a film by Kinuyo Tanaka

This 1955 romantic comedy is worthy of Molière. Mie Kitahara shines as Setsuko, the youngest of three sisters, who, together with her friend Yasui (Shōji Yasui), schemes to hook up her sister Ayako (Yōko Sugi) with a cute blast-from-the-past boy Amamiya (Kō Mishima). Awww.

殺しの烙印 / Koroshi no Rakuin / Branded to Kill

a film by Seijun Suzuki

In his 12 years with Nikkatsu, Seijun Suzuki directed astounding 40 pictures. Bizarrely, Suzuki’s 1967 hard-boiled masterpiece Branded to Kill prompted the study to fire him claiming that his works made “no sense and no money”.

Quoted as an influence by the likes of John Zorn and Quentin Tarantino, the movie stars Joe Shishido as Hanada, a contract killer who gets high on sniffing boiling rice; Mariko Ogawa as Mami, Hanada’s cute and unfaithful wife with a penchant of running naked around the house; Annu Mari as a femme fatale Misako; and Kōji Nanbara as a mysterious “Number One”. Very cool jazzy score by Naozumi Yamamoto. The version we were shown, like the one of The Moon, is lovingly restored in 4K from the original 35 mm reels — not sure if the projector at Casa de Colón is actually 4K, but still, the quality of the picture was outstanding.