Tokyo Drifter (1966)

	Also Known As: Tôkyô nagaremono (original)
	Year of first release: 1966
	Director: Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill, Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon)
	Actors: Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani
	Country: J
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 04.06.2020, Arte, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: The former head of a Yakuza gang dismantles his clan and is left with his closest henchman. When a formal rival gang tries to scam him of his property, they are both struggling to not reply with violence.
Review: In preparation to a month with not one but two Online Asian film festivals (the Nippon Connection and the FEFF), we found proposed on the Arte channel a series of Asian movies in different genres: A Touch of Zen, Blind Woman's Curse, Mr. Long, Ichi (the samurai woman) and this Tokyo Drifter (no relationship with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, although...). As I am those days in the mood to watch movies from the 70's I chose this one from 1966. I knew a little about the Japanese Cinema of that period (I have been to many FEFFs!), but I was still surprised by the quality of some parts of the movie, the ideas in composition and music, and the modernity of the cities at that time, in par with their American counterpart. Japan was in fact on its way to becoming the synonym of High-Tech it will be in the 80's. It is a bit hard to follow at start, having read the synopsis before helped, and then it became obvious it was not only because of me that the film was hard to follow, this is how it is done. A quick research after watching the movie (see its Wikipedia page) clarifies things: the director Seijun Suzuki, in fact already known on this blog for Branded to Kill, was known by its studio (the famous Nikkatsu) for his style getting crazier with time, so they kept on reducing his budgets, which in turn forced him to go for more and more abstraction. It is funny to think that I have always the feeling that Japanese studios have no control or overview over their directors as often shown by the too long final product. Note that this director is responsible for five more movies in 1966 alone! Those were crazy times. This conflict with his studio explains what I saw in the movie: confusing ellipses, brutal editing (it feels like the movie was edited to half its lengths to please Western audiences), confrontations coming out of nowhere... It also helped reading that the movie is intended as a parody of other genres and of the Japanese Cinema system. I am not trained enough to catch that. On the other hand, the movie includes some great ideas: first the story of a Yakuza gang being dismantled, then the jazzy soundtrack and the Surf Rock playing in the discotheque scenes, the colorful palette throughout the movie, the setting in different towns (even though we see only little of them) reminding me of my own Japan train-trip, some artistic fight scenes, and the final theatrical confrontation. All in all it has some feeling of French New Wave. Not an easy watch, but pleasant and interesting nonetheless.
Rating: 4 /10