Japanese Outlaw Masters

This week the Loft is showing a special program of rarely seen Yakuza films from the ’50s and ’60s. These are roughly the Japanese equivalent of the American gangster movies of the ’40s and ’50s, and the program includes Underworld Beauty and Tattooed Life by acclaimed master Seijun Suzuki and Pale Flower by Masahiro Shinoda, who continues to be one of Japan’s most prolific filmmakers. All feature the usual assortment of pretty girls, guys with guns and crimes gone bad. Both of the Suzuki works also feature artists sketching nude models, which is something of a metaphor for the painterly style of his work. Suzuki’s compositions are often noted, and he makes striking use of color in Tattooed Life, though it is on the whole the weakest of the three, as its long middle section includes little action. Underworld Beauty is a more traditional, and a more successful, gangster film, with a twisty story about jewels, thieves and a particularly valuable corpse. Pale Flower is in many respects even more standard that Underworld Beauty, featuring a gang war, a hit-man who’s become jaded with crime life, and the beautiful woman who he can’t seem to conquer. On the other hand, it’s a visual masterpiece of black and white, and the story has an existential edge that’s reminiscent of American noir.