Now before we begin, I don’t want to hear any giggling from the back, and I certainly won’t entertain any demands to investigate my download history…

But, in all serious, it does continue to surprise me that more films haven’t been made about the subject of pornography. As an industry it’s always struck me that it simply has to have potential drama seeping (surely not spurting) from its every pore – love, emotion, atypical human relationships, money, abuse – it seems to have the lot. Films that do attempt to tackle this still admittedly rather taboo topic, however, seem to fall into one of three camps; they’re either overly occupied with authentic aesthetic (Boogie Nights), morbidly explicit (Lukas Moodysson’s A Hole in My Heart), or worryingly giddy and accepting of their subject (The Girl Next Door, I Want Candy and several other pretty shameful teen sex comedies).

Easily the best film I’ve ever seen that concerns itself with the business of pornography is Shohei Imamura’s in-turns absurd and philosophical social satire The Pornographers. The great Japanese filmmaker here bypasses the pitfalls that undermined the work of both Paul Thomas Anderson and Moodysson by refusing to show even the slightest flicker of any onscreen action and instead focus on what’s going on behind the camera. The film’s central character is the affable if inevitably slovenly smalltime porn peddler Mr Ogata, who sees his life dive into tailspin after his widowed landlady lover takes ill and leaves him juggling the care of a pair of selfish, rapidly maturing teenagers with the daily grind of his disreputable and increasingly dangerous line of work.

The Pornographers is largely powered along by Shohei Imamura’s highly distinctive direction; in fact, in the big Oscar ceremony that’s occasionally going on in my mind, he’s always a sure-fire contender for best director for his work here alone. Imamura spends most of the film carefully placing his camera behind curtains, slightly ajar doors, windows, and in several instances a fishtank with a stonking great carp in it (which Mr Ogata’s landlady believes is the ghost of her dead husband, but that’s another story), with each inspired set-up giving his story a perfect, voyeuristic framework. Another notable technique he employs is that of filming most of the drama in fixed long-shots, only allowing the camera to move in a scarce handful of scenes – it’s worth noting that for all his stylistic complexities, Imamura once served as an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu, and through its lack of movement The Pornographers also manages to invoke that master director’s hypnotic, gentle rhythms, all amounting to a vivid and endlessly fascinating whole.

You can watch the opening sequence from The Pornographers below. No subtitles, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you can guess what’s going on. Stay tuned for some wonderfully weird-y music, too.

When we last checked in on Seijun Suzuki, he had just landed himself in some serious trouble with his employers at the Nikkatsu Company film studio. Having already warned the director that his films were getting far too weird, Suzuki offered them Tokyo Drifter, a kaliedoscopic, madcap riot, but also the best of the 38 films he had made for the company thus far. Neglecting to acknowledge the film’s obvious quality, Nikkatsu for the fourth, and apparently final time, threatened Suzuki with the sack if he didn’t shape up and turn in something relatively normal. This he managed to do to a certain extent with the period drama Fighting Elegy, released in 1966 (the same year as Tokyo Drifter). Ever so slightly appeased, his Nikkatsu bosses had obviously been lulled into a false sense of security when, the following year, they actually approached the troublesome maverick himself to tidy up a rambling and chaotic script entitled Branded to Kill. It was to become Suzuki’s 40th film for Nikkatsu in a mere 11 years; topping even Tokyo Drifter in terms of quality, it would be his best… Topping even Tokyo Drifter in terms of weirdness, it would also be his last.

Like Tokyo Drifter before it, Branded to Kill belongs to the popular yakuza genre, a mould of Japanese crime drama not dissimilar in essence to American film noir. Unlike Tokyo Drifter, however, which at least had a fairly straightforward basic plot at its centre, it is almost impossible to decipher what happens in Branded to Kill, certainly after just one sitting. I’ve seen it no less than three times now, and there’s still a lot in there that I’m uncertain about, but here goes… Hanada is a killer for hire, a hitman, and with his wife in tow, meets up with an ex-colleague who has found new employment as a chauffeur. Apparently Japanese hitmen follow a bizarrely bureaucratic ranking system, and Hanada is considered the third best in the business. Whilst on a top secret job with the chauffeur, our hero manages to kill both the fourth and second best hitmen, but the identity of the first remains a complete mystery to him. Meanwhile, Hanada’s wife has begun an affair with his yakuza boss, throwing all three of them into danger. Hanada isn’t too bothered, though, as he himself soon embarks on some extra-marital fun with the mysterious Misako, a rather maudlin young woman whose flat is decorated with dead birds and equally defunct butterflies. Unsurprisingly distracted by all this sordid tomfoolery Hanada, who is now Japan’s second highest rated hitman, attracts the unwanted attentions of the elusive number one after he botches an assassination job for the yakuza. Hanada quickly loses his grip on both reality and his own sanity as the number one hitman threatens to stalk him to an early grave. Oh, and I almost forget to tell you, throughout the film Hanada finds himself sexually aroused by the smell of boiling rice. So, there you go.

If all that wasn’t beguiling and bizarre enough in the first place (I would love to see what the original screenplay looked like before it got “tidied up”!), you should see how Seijun Suzuki brings it to the screen. Following the lurid technicolor onslaught of Tokyo Drifter, Nikkatsu barred Suzuki from making another film in colour. That doesn’t mean that Branded to Kill is any less visually arresting than its predecessor, however. What Suzuki did instead was to film in steely monochrome, creating an atmosphere that manages to be sleek, chic, moody and intense all at once. These are descriptions apt for Branded to Kill as a whole and, also like its predecessor, Suzuki’s narrative technique offers the viewer no quarter with regards to easy accessibility.

Once again the director’s cavalier cutting methods make the story often near impossible to follow, with action sequences in particular veering from the brutal to the comic before ending abruptly at almost terrifying tangents. With a plot as complicated as the one detailed above, you might think this may be some kind of hinderance, but this is a Seijun Suzuki film we’re talking about. Rather than struggle to keep abreast of everything that happens, I would recommend you simply kick back and soak up the cool and existential mood of the thing. Suzuki has a brilliant eye, one of the most distinctive in all of cinema, and Branded to Kill boasts many memorable moments. Misako’s animal morgue of an apartment should linger on in the memory for a long time, and several of the assassination scenes are equally inspired (particularly one which sees Hanada “popping” his prey from behind a huge cigarette lighter-shaped advertising hoarding). The final scenes too are insanely riveting, and amount to some of the most original in crime cinema, with Hanada and the number one hitman forming a morbid variation on The Odd Couple as they spend their final days paired together waiting for one to finally kill the other. The actor who plays Hanada is something of a novelty himself; Joe Shishido, a Nikkatsu contract player who tired of pretty boy roles and decided to have his cheek bones somewhat grotesquely enlargened by plastic surgery to help him appear tougher. Typically, Suzuki cast him in many of his films.

So yes, Seijun Suzuki made his best film with Branded to Kill, but of course it was the exact opposite of the kind of straight-forward crime thriller that Nikkatsu were looking for and this time they finally, definitely and unceremoniously issued him with his marching orders. He was officially fired for making films that “make no sense and even less money”. Although admittedly not a substansial commercial success by any stretch of the imagination, Suzuki had built up a large and loyal following among Japanese students and certain kinds of critics, and Branded to Kill was rapturously received by his supporters as yet another masterpiece. Quickly becoming identified as a key figure of the counter-culture movement in late 60s Japan, there were howls of protest from his young fans over his sacking, and a student group arranged to stage a vast retrospective of the many films Suzuki had made for Nikkatsu. This was halted however after the studio withdrew all of Suzuki’s films from circulation, meaning they couldn’t be seen in Japan or elsewhere for years to come. Nikkatsu also callously and completely unfairly tried to pin the studio’s financial troubles on Suzuki, causing the director to be ”blacklisted” by all of Japan’s major studios and unable to make another film for 10 years. It would amount to perhaps the largest career assassination job undertaken by any studio (East or West) against a former employee, and the talented, trailblazing director was rendered unemployable at the very height of his powers.

Seijun Suzuki would take Nikkatsu to court for unfair dismissal in a protracted court case that he eventually won. After his ban from filmmaking was lifted in 1977, he returned to Schochiku, the company he began his career with after the Second World War, and made his comeback with the poorly received golf drama (!) A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness. Mainstream acceptance would soon come his way, however, and his supernatural fable Zigeunerweisen would clean up at the 1981 Japanese Academy Awards, claiming top prize for both best picture and best director. Suzuki would continue making films throughout the 80s and 90s, and even turned in a loose sequel to Branded to Kill with 2001′s Pistol Opera. He is currently suffering from ill-health and as good as announced his retirement from filmmaking in 2006.

Whilst not being what you could call a well-known director (certainly not outside of Japan), Seijun Suzuki has no shortage of celebrity fans. Unsurprisingly Quentin Tarantino is a known advocate, and Suzuki is widely accepted as the godfather of edgy Asian cinema, with the likes Takeshi (‘s Castle!) Kitano and Wong Kar-Wai openly citing his influence. Personally, I have always thought of Suzuki, with his ice-cool and existential crime dramas, as providing the missing link between the hardboiled film noir masters of the 40s and 50s (Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller) and the laconic hipsters of the 80s and 90s (Aki Kaurismaki, Jim Jarmusch). Indeed, Jarmusch’s 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, about a mafia hitman who steeps himself in Eastern mysticism, copies almost exactly a scene from Branded to Kill in which Hanada executes a target by firing up at him through a plug hole in a bathroom sink. With this influence in mind, then, Seijun Suzuki surely deserves to take his place alongside the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Melville for identifying the arty, cool and clever potential in crime cinema.

Thankfully, more and more Suzuki films are coming out on DVD these days, and both Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill have been knocking around for some time now, and can be purchased quite cheaply. I highly recommend you buy them both, and immerse yourself in the crazy world of Seijun Suzuki. Here, as a taster, is the bonkers trailer for Branded to Kill. WARNING: May contain rice-sniffing.

Seijun Suzuki is drinking in the Last Chance Saloon… Or rather, he is drinking in whatever the Japanese equivalent of the Last Chance Saloon is. The year is 1966, and Suzuki is the undisputed king of the B-movie in Japan. He is a contract director at the Nikkatsu Company’s studio in Tokyo, and he has already turned in a truly awe-inspiring 37 films in 11 years for his employers, many of which have had generous praise heaped on them by critics; most unusual for Japanese B-movies at the time. You’d think then that the suits at Nikkatsu would be pleased with their most prolific charge, but they’re not. You’d also think that they’d appreciate his films and the reputation-enhancing effect they have had on Nikkatsu, but they don’t. The trouble is that the top brass at the studio like their films to make sense, but Suzuki films, as brilliant, vibrant, and inspired as they may be, really don’t make that much sense at all. They certainly don’t make that much sense in a way that a promotion-conscious, profit-hungry producer cares about, at any rate. That’s why Nikkatsu have offered an ultamatium to Suzuki; tone down the craziness in your films or you’ll face the chop. He’s even had his usual, already relatively meagre, budget slashed for his forthcoming 38th film, just to ensure he has less finance to fund his inventive lunacy.

Film number 38 turns out to be Tokyo Drifter, and it probably won’t come as any surprise to you to learn that far from playing it straight, as requested, Seijun Suzuki actually turns in his most alluring, alarming, wild, wonderful and off-the-wall film yet. It’s also his very best film yet, but more on that in a minute. First, a bit of bio. Suzuki was born in Japan in 1923, and some twenty years later was recruited as a soldier for Imperial Japan, seeing action in the Second World War. Fighting in the Navy, Suzuki was twice shipwrecked, and once claimed in an interview that he found the horrors of war (which he’d witnessed first hand) rather ”comical”. It may well have been these experiences that informed the askew, and often unsettling, view of the world that he would later adopt in his films, and after the war he began work as an assistant director at the Schochiku Company’s main studio.

The young, promising Suzuki was poached by the rival Nikkatsu Company in 1954, and two years later our hero made his debut as a fully-fledged director in his own right with the pop star vehicle, Victory is Mine. The Japanese studio system at the time was as rigid and controlling as anything ever seen in Hollywood, and directors of B-movies were not given much time or money to spend on the films they were assigned to make. Suzuki soon worked out, however, that the low-budget films he was employed to make were so low down in Nikkatsu’s priorities that, provided he work cheaply and efficiently, he could quietly subvert them in ways that would at least grant him creative satisfaction, if nothing else. Thus he began to eschew the safe, formulaic approach generally taken to B-movie making in favour of more distinctive and daring methods of cinematic storytelling. Much of Suzuki’s initial, late 50s output is riveting, and already touched by oddball brilliance (for an example, see his earliest effort currently available, 1958′s Underworld Beauty), but the director himself credits The Bastard, made in 1963, as the true beginning of his career as a wayward auteur. Indeed, this is the point where the critics sit up and take notice of Suzuki’s rapidly developing idiosyncratic style. The Nikkatsu Company, on the other hand, fail to notice weirdness is afoot in their B-movie department until Suzuki releases Tattooed Life in 1965, after which he is reprimanded for the first time. In true Suzuki style he follows this with the even stranger, not to mention raunchier, Carmen from Kawachi, the following year, which equally displeases the studio. That’s two strikes against Suzuki, another and he’s out… The scene was set for Tokyo Drifter.

On the surface of it Tokyo Drifter is just another yakuza film, a hugely popular Japanese genre, highly similar to film noir, depicting the dangerous and action packed lives of the country’s criminal element. The plot of Tokyo Drifter is fairly run-of-the-mill for a film of it’s kind, albeit with some nice existential touches, and sees gangster Tetsu, determined to stay faithful to his boss, endangering his life by refusing to join a rival clan. When it becomes apparent that this decision may have put his boss in jeoprady too, Tetsu agrees to make himself scarce, and becomes the Tokyo Drifter of the title, wandering all over Japan. This doesn’t mean he’s out of harm’s way completely, of course, and he encounters many foes on his travels, before learning of a double cross that takes him back to the capital swearing revenge.

Exciting stuff but, as with Frank Carson, it’s the way Suzuki tells ‘em. As already noted, Tokyo Drifter was the director’s boldest concoction yet, and it really has to be seen to be believed. An intoxicating mix of colours, filters, lighting, and set design, the film has a rich and unwieldly aesthetic tone that must have been positively mind-blowing in the conservative Japan of the mid 60s. And it’s not just the madcap manner in which Suzuki paints a visual picture that makes the film so unique, he also proved something of a maverick behind the editing suite, too. I’m sure some of you are familiar with the old Godard adage that a scene which follows another scene in a film doesn’t necessarily have to be the scene that follows it, in other words the correct scene, narratively speaking. This description could well be applied to many of Suzuki’s films, too, particularly Tokyo Drifter. There are times when we think we’re right in the middle of the action, only for the camera to take us somewhere else altogether. Sequences are left unfinished and time jumps around illogically, but it’s all part of the reckless fun. Suzuki also shows scant regard for genre convention, either, and chooses to liberally sprinkle slapstick, sight-gags, running jokes, and even a handful of musical numbers all over this hard-boiled yakuza film. In no way imaginable was Tokyo Drifter the sort of thing an audience could have expected.

Despite the fact they should maybe have known better, it wasn’t the sort of thing the Nikkatsu company were expecting either. After hitting his paymasters with his most brazenly bonkers film to date, Suzuki predictably found himself called into the headmasters office once more. Despite the fact they already threatened him with the sack, they couldn’t ignore the ongoing support being shown for the director by the critics, and fiercely loyal cult following he was developing among Japanese students. Part of what had upset Nikkatsu most about the film was it’s vivid, retina-scorching use of colour, which they considered to be lurid, garish and unneccessary. So a compromise was reached, Suzuki could keep his job, but his next film had to be in black and white. Oh, and it really, really, really had to make sense this time. Or else he really would lose his job, and this time they meant it.

What did Seijun Suzuki do next? Did he turn in a pedestrian crowd-pleaser that proved a box office smash and made all his enemies at Nikkatsu rich and happy? Or did he make a film even madder and more magnificent than Tokyo Drifter, and pay the ultimate price professionally as a result? Tune in next week to find out!

I know you’re all dying to find out what happens next, but in the meantime please enjoy this typically head-spinning clip from Tokyo Drifter. Observe how Suzuki takes leave of the beginnings of a violent battle to showcase the main protagonist intoning a rather brilliant moody ballad, before returning to said battle just in time for it’s bloody climax. The man’s a true genius!

Blah, blah, blah… Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven by John Sturges in 1960… Yackety smackety… Yojimbo served as the inspiration for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars… Blah, blah, blah… George Lucas ripped off The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars… Yackety smackety… etc.

No, I haven’t gone mad. I just want to roll out every tiresome truism regarding Akira Kurosawa that apparently MUST be acknowledged every time his name comes up in conversation, and get them out of the way. It’s always seemed a bit like damning with so much faint praise to me that one of the towering talents in cinema history is as good as condemned to be mentioned merely as a source of inspiration for lesser filmmakers (of the above films he inspired, only A Fistful of Dollars matches the original). So today we’re not going to be talking about a Kurosawa film that has been “borrowed” by anyone else, at least not as far as I’m aware. Today we’re going to have a look at a Kurosawa film that is often overlooked in a filmography that is as high in quality as it is in number; High and Low.

Perhaps it would be somewhat unfair of me, after bemoaning how Kurosawa is mainly regarded for having others borrow from him, to neglect to mention that the Japanese master was not shy of drawing inspiration from elsewhere himself. Indeed, a huge fan of western literature, Kurosawa both filmed Dostoevsky (The Idiot) and adapted Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Throne of Blood) during his 50s golden period. And while it is apparently against the law to mention Yojimbo without acknowledging that it provided the story for A Fistful of Dollars (and later Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing), it is less well known that Kurosawa himself found that very same story in Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel, Red Harvest.

Filmed in 1963, two years after Yojimbo, High and Low sees Kurosawa again turning to an American crime writer for his source material, this time Ed McBain, and his story King’s Ransom. Unlike Red Harvest, however, King’s Ransom is not traditional gangster-based noir, and belongs more to the police procedural genre; fiction which covers in exacting detail exactly how the police go about solving mysterious crimes. These stories proved very popular in Japan throughout the 50s and 60s, and High and Low appears to be the best example of a filmed version.

Very much a film of two halves, the first portion of High and Low tells the story of Kingo Gondo, an ambitious executive for an established shoe manufacturer. Gondo is engaged in a heated battle to wrest control of the lucrative business off his incompetent fellow executives, and has staked all of his worldly possessions on a buyout of the company. Just as he’s about to clinch the deal, however, disaster strikes. A kidnapper has taken his son and demanded an impossibly high ransom. This means that Gondo must give everything he has painstakingly gathered together for his buyout, and more, to get his son back, plunging his family and his business into financial ruin at the very same time. It IS a price he is willing to pay, of course, at least until it transpires that the kidnappers picked up the wrong boy. Rather than snatch his son, who has been secretly, safely at home throughout the initial panic, they have taken the child of Gondo’s lowly chauffeur. This presents an even greater dilema for the shrewd and ruthless Gondo; does he give up his whole world in order to save another man’s son?

I’m not going to tell you anymore, as it is a powerful first-half that Kurosawa plays with typical brilliance. Without revealing the outcome of the kidnapping, part two follows the police in their attempts to uncover the crooks behind the plot, and although police procedurals differ in several aspects to straight-up film noir, the unravelling of the mystery in High and Low proves as smoky and coolly an existentsial delight as anything it’s sister genre could come up with.

As previously mentioned, Kurosawa’s classic period is undeniably the 1950s, during which time he made several of cinema’s all time classics, beginning with Rashomon at the very start of the decade. It is his films of the 50s which he is most famous for, and the majority of those films can be described as medieval epics, set in Japan during the age of feudalism; Seven Samurai being the most celebrated example. Look either side of that decade, however, and there are still many incredible Kurosawa films to choose from. Another one I’m very fond of is 1949′s Stray Dog, another drama in the police procedural mould and, like High and Low, it also proves that Kurosawa doesn’t have to deliver samurai swords ‘n’ sandals to come up with a classic. The seamy, sinister and uncertain world of post-war Japan provides an equally emotionally charged and turbulent battlefield for the master to deliver his trademark technically flawless, high-impact dramas.

As with most classic Kurosawa, High and Low also boasts an appearance by the iconic, enigmatic Toshiro Mifune, excellent here as the unfortunate Kingo Gondo. One of the great actor/director partnerships, Mifune/Kurosawa are as effective a partnership as De Niro/Scorsese, as elegant as Von Sydow/Bergman, and as enduring as Woody Allen and, erm, himself. Mifune always burns up the screen, and here he is in turns prickly, intense and sly. He also manages a credible and convincing change of character in the film’s second half, helping to provide Kurosawa with a finale that is both chilling and utterly raw. You’re going to have to watch High and Low to find out what happens, and I High-ly recommend that you do.

Have a look here at the snazzy and unusual US trailer, which helpfully doesn’t give too much away.