Text | Shu Ming
<h1>Kiyoshun Suzuki, who was fired by Nikko Pictures</h1>
In July 1996, the Hong Kong Arts Centre released 15 films by Kiyoshi Suzuki and promoted him as a giant of Japanese B-movies. The program planners believe that culture and art are only good and bad, and there is no difference between high and low. In other words, some popular genre films are also artistic and worth appreciating.
Suzuki Kiyoshun
B-grade films are the product of the Hollywood-style studio system, because of the high-cost key production of Big Kashi, it is natural to need low-cost second- and third-rate films with one-vote two-piece viewing regulations. The 40 films that Kiyoshun Suzuki has made in 12 years at Nikho are exactly such products. He excels in his ability to turn decay into magic, and has established a unique personal style through genre films such as gangster films, literary films and pornography.
Kiyoshi Suzuki made six shoddy films in 1961, which were lackluster, but in 1959 he made a 40-minute black-and-white film "The Book of Love", which used the lyrical story of men and women in love to express the illusion of infatuation with love letters, and the scene blended just right. "The Book of Love" is a short film made to match the A-grade film starring Yujiro Ishihara, and no one paid attention to it at that time.
But today, the image effect of the film is admirable. Although the character of the film has not developed (which is a common problem in Suzuki's films), the visual treatment of the framing camera and the romantic lyrical tone have long shown the excellent style of the director. Later, Shunji Iwai's "Love Letters" (1995) may have been inspired by the film.
Love Letters (1995)
Kiyoshun Suzuki's works of the Nichiren Era (1956-1967) can be divided into two periods. In 1963, after filming "Youth of the Beast", he went on to shoot "Evil Taro", and had the opportunity to work with art director Yukio Kimura, which was a turning point in his creative career.
Kiyoshun Suzuki, who has been working hard to enrich the film's images through special compositions, clever props and strong colors, has since added a good helper of like-mindedness, and has continued to experiment and develop his unique aesthetic film style in a series of subsequent works.
The Youth of the Beast (1963)
Kimura is an outstanding art director and a rare first-class talent in the Suzuki director group. Kimura also collaborated with Kei Kumai (1930-2007) in the 1970s, and their three masterpieces, "Oshawa" (1972), "Wangxiang" (1974) and "Sea and Poison" (1986), were successively awarded the first place in the annual top ten business cards of the "Movie Shunbao".
Unfortunately, in the 1960s, Suzuki's genre films with mixed content were not taken seriously by film critics. In 1967, after he made the avant-garde and refined "Killer Brand", he was ruthlessly fired the following year by the Nissho company on the grounds that "he constantly shoots unintelligible movies, not a good director, and unsolvable movies are the shame of daily life".
<h1>Surreal style of brilliant colors</h1>
After Kiyoshi Suzuki was fired by Nichizo, he did not have the opportunity to make another film for nine years. It was not until 1977 that an independent production company supported him to shoot "The Tale of Sorrows", which was based on the theme of female golfers turning into advertising stars, and began his creative career in his later years.
The Tale of Sorrow (1977)
From 1980 to 1991, with the support of independent producer Genjiro Arado, he completed the so-called "Romantic Trilogy" of "Song of the Wanderer" (1980), "Yang YanZa" (1981) and "YumeJI" (1991).
These three ghostly talk films, written by Yoshizo Tanaka, are the most colorful, romantic, and surreal works of Kiyoshun Suzuki, and are recognized as his masterpieces, along with his earlier Elegy of Violence (1966) and Killer Brand.
Song of the Wanderer (1980)
Kiyoshi Suzuki is a popular film creator who is constrained by the limitations of B-grade films (such as low budget production fees, cookie-cutter storylines, ordinary actors, and even a messy script), he likes to deliberately add some ridiculous and funny plots and laughable video effects to make the film vivid and interesting.
He also loves to use surreal expressions, including the use of strong colors to express psychology and atmosphere (red, especially the main elements of his films), and exaggerated techniques to mock the system and reality of society. The absurd and abstract elements of his films are suitable for appreciation as black comedy or formal art.
Examples of this are numerous, such as the frenzied violence of "The Youth of the Beast" (1963), the red of the picture of Tsuruta (Kobayashi) after killing two extortionists in the casino in Kanto Prodigal Son (1963), the clothes of four street prostitutes in four different colors (red, green, purple and yellow) in Flesh's Gate (1964), the lynching and lynching of naked women, the slaughter of cattle by Japanese veterans, and the ridicule of the American occupation forces and missionaries.
The Gate of Flesh (1964)
There are also the suicide and martyrdom of Mikami (Kawachi Mino) and Harumi (Yumiko Nogawa) in the fierce wind at the end of "Haruhi" (1965), the kabuki form of Tetsutaro (Hideki Takahashi) at the end of the film "White Tiger Tattoo" (1965), and the snow gun battle between the two killers in "Tokyo Wanderer" (1966), which are all memorable scenes.
White Tiger Tattoo (1965)
<h1>The Doubtful And Doubtful "Song of the Wanderer" and "Yang YanZa"</h1>
Song of the Wanderers: German teacher Toyojiro Aochi (Toshihachi Fujita) rescues Nakasa Yoshio (Harada Yoshio), who is suspected of being a murderer by villagers, and the two have taught at the Army Non-Commissioned Officer School together, but the mad Nakasa often wanders away from home. When the two reunite, they meet the geisha Koda (Naoko Otani), and the three witness three blind beggars with a woman and two men. Aoichi later marries Theon (Naoko Otani), who looks like Inari, but Enge dies after giving birth to her daughter, Toyoko.
Discovering that XiaoDao had become Nakasa's step-wife, he suspected that his wife, Zhou Zi (Da Nan Michidai), was having an affair with Nakasa. A few years later, Nakasa died suddenly, and Ina often came to his house at night and asked him to return the books that Nakasa had lent him and the Spanish violin composer Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) record "Song of the Wanderer"...
"Yang YanZa": New playwright Harukaku Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda) meets a beautiful woman with incredible charm (Dainan Michiyo), who later learns that she is the second wife of the rich man Who sponsored him, Tamaki (Nakamura Katsuo), and Tamaki's blonde-haired and blue-eyed ex-wife Ina (Nanda Teriko) has just died.
Matsuzaki became obsessed with Pinko and went to Kanazawa to meet her on the train, but on the train, he met Tamamoto, who was preparing to witness the martyrdom of a couple of lovers committing suicide in Kanazawa. In Kanazawa Matsuzaki, in which Ina and Pinko are sitting on a boat together, Tamaki also forces him to commit suicide with Pinko at gunpoint...
"Yang YanZa" (1981)
The Song of the Wanderer is based on some novels by Uchida Hyakusaki (1889-1971), and YangYanza is based on the novels of Izumi Kyoka (1873-1939). Uchida's work has a unique fantasy style, while Izumi's work is full of romantic atmosphere and surreal artistic beauty.
In these two films, Kiyoshun Suzuki uses fantasy plots, grotesque characters, the appearance of ghosts, dazzling colors and ingenious images to create his mysterious erotic film world, whose richness, attraction and formal beauty cannot be described by pen and ink.
Born in 1923, Kiyoshi Suzuki has made about 50 films so far. He was a contemporary of Hozo Masomura (1924-1986), who was born a year later, and Kihachi Okamoto (1924-2005), although Masomura served at Daiei and Okamoto was employed by Toho. All three are talented and innovative directors, and Suzuki is inferior in terms of chance. But in the '90s, Suzuki had been re-evaluated by Japanese film critics who had previously ignored him.
In 1995, based on about 100 votes, Kiyoshi Suzuki, along with Sadao Yamanaka, Keisuke Kinoshita and Kiyohachi Okamoto, ranked ninth with 11 votes, and can be said to have achieved the status of film master. His recent works Pistol Opera (2001) and Tanuki Goten (2005) have been screened at European and American film festivals and received good reviews, making him a veteran Japanese director who is quite popular in the West.
"Tanuki Goten" (2005)