Thanks Karin. Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and
Branded to Kill are widely available and utterly
unique--or so I'd thought. It's exciting to hear that
there are more films in the 50s-60s Japanese crime
film pantheon. But I would be surprised if they had
the fantastic vision of Suzuki. But if there are Carol
Reeds to his Hitchcock, bring 'em on.
That these films are obscure in the West, it's a lucky
break that prints have even survived in Japan, since
there's not a wide interest in classic film among the
Japanese. I used to teach college classes with a lot
of Japanese students and most of them didn't know who
Kurosawa was and had never seen a black and white
movie. Maybe that's changing?
I hope these films get a showing in LA so I can see
them.
--- Karin Montin <kmontin@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Saw this today in the Globe and Mail and thought it
> might be of interest to some of you here.
>
> VANCOUVER In the age of YouTube, downloads and
> wide selections of foreign films at the local video
> store, it's unusual to come across a genre of film
> that is virtually unknown in North America. But even
> many hard-core film mavens in the West - including
> experts in Japanese cinema - are being exposed for
> the first time to what's known as Nikkatsu Action
> Cinema.
>
> The films, made by the Nikkatsu studio in Japan from
> the mid-1950s to the early seventies, were hybrids
> that borrowed heavily from Hollywood and European
> films. And while they were called "action films"
> (transliterated into Japanese as akushon), they
> incorporated several genres popular in the West:
> film noir, melodrama, gangster films and westerns.
>
> Read the rest at
>
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080730.wnikkatsu30/BNStory/Entertainment/
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
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