ACTION & ANARCHY: THE FILMS OF SEIJUN SUZUKI
“Seijun Suzuki is a master stylist and one of Japanese cinema’s greatest innovators. His work has been a great inspiration to me. A retrospective of his films – fantastic!” – Jim Jarmusch
“To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.”— Manohla Dargis, NY TIMES
All shows are regular admission.
GATE OF FLESH Wednesday, December 30 at 7:30 pm
Part social-realist drama, part sadomasochistic trash opera, Gate of Flesh paints a dog-eat-dog portrait of postwar Tokyo. The film takes the point of view of a gang of tough prostitutes working out of a bombed-out building. When a lusty ex-soldier lurches into their midst, the group’s most sensitive member is tempted to break one of their strictest rules: no falling in love. From the women’s bold, color-coded dresses to the unorthodox use of superimposition effects and theatrical lighting, this is Suzuki at his most astonishingly inventive. (Japan, 1964, 35mm, 90 min., color, Japanese with English subtitles)
Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.
Seijun Suzuki first became famous when he was fired by Nikkatsu Studios for making films that, as he put it, “made no sense and made no money.” But it was his freewheeling approach and audacious experimentation that gained Suzuki a cult following in Japan and abroad. Suzuki’s job at Nikkatsu was to make B movies out of scripts that were assigned to him. In the mid-1960s, Suzuki’s restlessness began to come through as he began experimenting with the assigned material. These films established Suzuki as a stylistic innovator working within—and rebelling against—the commercial constraints of studio work. In the 1990s, a new generation of devotees, most notably Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, praised Suzuki in the press and referenced his work in their films. Co-presented with the Japan Foundation.