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Negative, Nonsensical, and Non-Conformist: The Films of Suzuki Seijun
In the late 1950s, Suzuki Seijun was an unknown, anxious low-ranking film director churning out so-called program pictures for Japan's most successful movie studio, Nikkatsu. In the early 1960s, he met with modest success in directing popular movies about yakuza gangsters and mild exploitation films featuring prostitutes and teenage rebels. In this book, Peter A. Yacavone argues that Suzuki became an unlikely cinematic rebel and, with hindsight, one of the most important voices in the global cinema of the 1960s. Working from within the studio system, Suzuki almost single-handedly rejected the restrictive filmmaking norms of the postwar period and expanded the form and language of popular cinema. This artistic rebellion proved costly when Suzuki was fired in 1967 and virtually blacklisted by the studios, but Suzuki returned triumphantly to the scene of world cinema in the 1980s and 1990s with a series of critically celebrated, avant-garde tales of the supernatural and the uncanny. This book provides a well-informed, philosophically oriented analysis of Suzuki's 49 feature films.
Fig. 5.9. Violence Out-of-Sync (shot 2): what seems to be Mikami’s reaction shot to his own violence is actually the moment before he slaps Harumi (Shunpuden)
Fig. 5.10. Rage Against the System (shot 5): Harumi reacts to her intolerable entrapment (prostitution or romantic attachment to the contemptuous Mikami)—a continuous scream for five shots, with sound and visuals out-of-sync (Shunpuden)
Fig. 5.11. The Restoration of Order? (shot 10): The prostitutes jeer at Mikami in retaliation for his violence. When they mock that Harumi prefers the monstrous adjutant, Harumi is forced to defend her romantic feelings for Mikami. But the formal discontinuity (like Harumi’s entrapment) does not cease (Shunpuden)
Fig. 5.12. Sadism and Sexploitation: in Suzuki Norifumi’s satire Ero shogun to nijūichi nin no aishō / Lustful Shogun and his 91 Concubines (Tōei 1972), a long shot captures dozens of concubines lined up in a row, tickled and then seemingly violated by serving woman with paintbrushes, on the orders of the shogun.