After viewing Jean-Pierre Melville's thrilling Bob le Flambeur (1956-also reviewed)I began checking for other Noir titles to view. Despite having picked up the Criterion DVD on eBay years ago (!),I've somehow never got round to viewing the film,which has led to me feeling it was time to get branded.
View on the film:
Getting the role thanks to being the only actress comfortable appearing naked, Mariko Ogawa gives a buoyant turn as Femme Fatale Hanada. A burlesque dancer off-screen, Ogawa brings withering body language moves to Hanada, which along with casting brittle Noir vines across the screen, also gives Hanada a seductive temptress appearance. Driving in as a number, not a free man,Jo Shishido gives a magnetic performance as Noir loner Number Three Killer,whose sniffing of rice and black glasses-wearing Shishido plays with chic glamour, which Shishido pairs with a rumbling anxiety on relisation that all the other number killers have his number on their kill list.
Mentioned later by the director that he wanted Killer Number 3 to be a quintessentially Japanese killer by having a rice sniffing habit,since "If he were Italian, he'd get turned on by macaroni, right?" the screenplay by Hachiro Guryu/Mitsutoshi Ishigami/ Chusei Sone and Atsushi Yamatoya boils up cracking, hip New Wave-flavoured Noir dialogue, served up in Killer Number 3's laid-back remarks, brimming with confidence over fulfilling the easy job.
Missing a target which causes him to become a target to his old underworld bosses, the writers rub Killer Number 3's status with raw paranoia, fuelled by obsessive love for Nakajo, (a devilishly seductive Annu Mari) and all the other numbers who had links to him,wanting to cut his number off.
Working for the 6th and final time with Jo Shishido on a production that left him with one day for editing and a decade blacklisted from making films, directing auteur Seijun Suzuki flies in on a astonishing Japanese New Wave Noir (JNW) creation. Taking the experimental corners of his past works, Suzuki and his regular cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka gloriously twist the JNW and Film Noir inside out with a Acid Jazz atmosphere, sliding across the screen in drawn pelts of rain and whistling birds hitting the screen in Suzuki's continuing to expand his surrealist flourishes.
Backed by a brassy Jazz score from Naozumi Yamamoto, Suzuki pulls the Killer glasses off with ultra-JNW stylisation, getting the number down in steamy Noir low-lighting, struck by fluid JNW whip-pans/zoom-ins to burning bullet holes, and fractured daring wide-shoots diced with brooding shadowed close-ups leaving Killer Number 3 branded to kill.
View on the film:
Getting the role thanks to being the only actress comfortable appearing naked, Mariko Ogawa gives a buoyant turn as Femme Fatale Hanada. A burlesque dancer off-screen, Ogawa brings withering body language moves to Hanada, which along with casting brittle Noir vines across the screen, also gives Hanada a seductive temptress appearance. Driving in as a number, not a free man,Jo Shishido gives a magnetic performance as Noir loner Number Three Killer,whose sniffing of rice and black glasses-wearing Shishido plays with chic glamour, which Shishido pairs with a rumbling anxiety on relisation that all the other number killers have his number on their kill list.
Mentioned later by the director that he wanted Killer Number 3 to be a quintessentially Japanese killer by having a rice sniffing habit,since "If he were Italian, he'd get turned on by macaroni, right?" the screenplay by Hachiro Guryu/Mitsutoshi Ishigami/ Chusei Sone and Atsushi Yamatoya boils up cracking, hip New Wave-flavoured Noir dialogue, served up in Killer Number 3's laid-back remarks, brimming with confidence over fulfilling the easy job.
Missing a target which causes him to become a target to his old underworld bosses, the writers rub Killer Number 3's status with raw paranoia, fuelled by obsessive love for Nakajo, (a devilishly seductive Annu Mari) and all the other numbers who had links to him,wanting to cut his number off.
Working for the 6th and final time with Jo Shishido on a production that left him with one day for editing and a decade blacklisted from making films, directing auteur Seijun Suzuki flies in on a astonishing Japanese New Wave Noir (JNW) creation. Taking the experimental corners of his past works, Suzuki and his regular cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka gloriously twist the JNW and Film Noir inside out with a Acid Jazz atmosphere, sliding across the screen in drawn pelts of rain and whistling birds hitting the screen in Suzuki's continuing to expand his surrealist flourishes.
Backed by a brassy Jazz score from Naozumi Yamamoto, Suzuki pulls the Killer glasses off with ultra-JNW stylisation, getting the number down in steamy Noir low-lighting, struck by fluid JNW whip-pans/zoom-ins to burning bullet holes, and fractured daring wide-shoots diced with brooding shadowed close-ups leaving Killer Number 3 branded to kill.