The Woman From The Sea (Kaitei Kara Kita Onna)

Watered States

The Woman From The Sea 
(Kaitei Kara Kita Onna)
1959 Japan
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Seen at a screening at the National Film Theatre

Warning: Slight spoilers swimming around the depths this review...

This is a movie which I had a bit of a strange reaction to when I finally saw it. I went to an NFT screening with JamesDevereaux of The Great Acting Blog and after the film was done he asked me what I thought of it and, in all honesty, I felt little disappointed but ultimately wanting to take another look at it... which is unlikely at the moment since the movie has never been made available on video in a country which would necessitate a subtitled print of a relatively (for Western audiences) obscure film. I said I’d need to sleep on it and, after a few fitful attempts at sleep (my personal life at the moment is a wreck) I have come to the conclusion that it’s a film I’d very much like to rewatch and let grow on me. Which must mean I kinda liked it, right? My feelings will probably be more apparent to me as I finish writing this review.

The film was screening as part of a season of old Nikkatsu studio films at the National Film Theatre and the curator of the event, Jasper Sharp, came out and did a little intro to the movie. Now bearing in mind the NFT staff always give out fact sheets containing an article about the movie you’re about to watch before the screening, I have to say that the gentleman in question was, for the most part, just underlining what I’d already only just read on the programme notes. However, I am grateful to this guy because he mentioned one insightful scrap of information in his opening spiel which, although I would probably have arrived at the same conclusion myself after watching the film, I have to give credit to him for because he pointed it out first and maybe I was looking out for it. That information was a comparison of this film and others like it to... Scooby Doo... and I’ll explain just why I agree with that proposition in a little while.

So the first thing I have to say is that it’s very much of its time, but for an American or British picture, in terms of cutting and editing. Even the shot set ups, although there were a couple of stand outs, were not what I was expecting from a Nikkatsu studio picture from this specific era (Nikkatsu are, of course, Japan’s oldest film studio). Most, not all but most, of the shots are a little less stylised and the space less artificially populated than I would suspect from some of the giants of Nikkatsu... people like Seijun Suzuki and his ilk. Instead, the movie relies on a more charming and comfortable feeling of community injected into the scripting and acting. The acting, by the way, was pretty matter of fact but stronger for it in this one, with special mention going to whoever the lady was who played the main male protagonist’s aunt.

The film took me by surprise because I was expecting something more serious and less lightweight for a picture that essentially contains supernatural elements mostly associated with the horror genre and, indeed, you can certainly see strong elements of that genre in this film but in a more “gee whiz” kind of presentation. Dealing with a beautiful (and HIsako Tsukuba really does have a searing presence in this role) fish-woman who attaches herself to our main protagonist Toshio (played by Tamio Kawachi) early on in the film, I was expecting something a little more haunting and poetic like a watery version of Kaneto Shindô’s excellent film about cat spirits, Kuroneko. Instead, we had a similar idea but with a lady who is a shark and who has been poaching and eating fish, not to mention feasting down on some of the locals as part of her diet too.

The strange bit is that the whole movie has been cross-pollinated with what I can only assume are the Japanese equivalent of the American beach culture movies of the time (you know, stuff like the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicelli vehicle Beach Blanket Bingo). These were apparently (and again thanks to Jasper Sharp for this) known as “sun tribe” movies and this makes for a rather uneasy, if spectacularly interesting, blend to watch on screen because, on the one hand you have a threat to the community in the form of a hostile, aggressive fish-woman who lures her victims to their death and eats them and it’s all mixed in with the same fish-woman and Toshio getting all teenage romantic and starry eyed. It’s quite a stark contrast at times too, because the villagers who seek to slay this beautiful monster are really quite viscous in their intent and even Toshio’s brother is killed off by the titular monster.

And while all this is going on, the great Japanese composer Masaru Sato’s score is enhancing the shenanigans even further and this is where the Scooby Doo analogy really takes hold because one of the methods the filmmakers use to give the audience the message that this is a wholesome movie about a bunch of kids investigating groovy mysteries is to have Sato deliver a score full of weird jazz and percussion hits and, annoyingly, Hawaiian guitar stingers... all dropped in almost without structure, or at least quite randomly, within the underlying music. And thinking of it, although it’s been many decades since I watched an episode of Scooby Doo, an extremely similar method of scoring was taking place in those early cartoons and this does give the picture a very strong message that it’s all just a heady, teenage romp.

Except it’s not. People are dying in brutal fashion and even Toshio is in line to be the next meal of the young “fish themed maiden”. So it’s all very interesting actually.

At the end of the day... I was fairly entertained by this film and I would certainly pay out for a DVD or Blu Ray of this movie if it was available (I’m looking at you Criterion Eclipse!) An interesting experience and one that people who are into exploring different movies should all strive to seek out... or at least a movie in a similar vein. Time and money well spent.

I Am Waiting (Ore Wa Matteru Ze)

The Wait Escape

I Am Waiting (Ore Wa Matteru Ze)
1957 Japan
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Criterion Eclipse Region 1 (NIkkatsu Noir Box)

Warning: Slight spoilers waiting in the dark shadows.

I Am Waiting is one of those films that, as a watcher of many pieces of cinematic art, you are just waiting to stumble across sometime because they are such cool films and you know your life just got richer when you’ve seen something like this for the first time. It happens less and less the older you get but I, for my part, do get at least three or four movies a year like this slipping in under the radar still... and I really love it when I find something which I know I will be going back to in certain moods and moments of my life yet to come.

The first feature film by Japanese director Koreyoshi Kurahara, I Am Waiting, dates back to 1957 and stars the “on the rise” Japanese matinee idol Yûjirô Ishihara (who got to have such a following in Japan that he even turned up in the movie Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines). This is my first watch of this, as it’s included in a boxed set my parents got me for my birthday earlier in the year, the Criterion/Eclipse imprint of Nikkatsu Noir. As a fair few of the “cooler” movies I’ve seen over the last 20 or so years have come from the Nikkatsu studios, I was keen to see what some of their early “noir” movies looked like... this, like many I presume, is styled in such a way as to compete with the various American and French films that were so popular in Japan at the time (and probably still are today no doubt... especially American movies, who are back to being the rulers of most of the world when it comes to getting their product seen, it seems to me).

The film opens with the lead character, Jôji Shimaki, closing his riverside restaurant for the night and walking the gloomy path to post a letter which will have some significance as the story progresses. Here, he is the epitome of the relaxed and gloomy noir sensibilities required in abundance for this shadowy kind of movie making and, as he continues on past the post box, he stumbles upon Saeko (played with much on screen presence by Mie Kitahara), a mysterious woman who looks like she’s just about ready to throw herself in that river. Jôji comes to her rescue with offers of shelter and employment and before you know it, she is developing an unrequited relationship with him... but he has no time for love as his missing brother’s shadowy past and his own former life as a championship boxer who killed someone by accident outside the ring return and collide to haunt his world. When he finally finds out what has happened to his brother, who was supposed to have gone to Brazil a year and a half ago and “set up shop” so he could follow along after... it turns out it all ties in with the gang of cheap hoods who have reclaimed Seiko and her “canary voice” as their own.

Shot in stark black & white and featuring a story that doesn’t always quite unfold the way you think it’s going to, you can see exactly the route laid out for you like an open map when you realise how these kinds of films evolved and mutated into the kind of youth culture crime movies I normally associate with the Nikkatsu studio, namely and especially with the gradual evolution of their infamous director Seijun Suzuki, who himself only made his debut feature a year before this. It’s interesting to  view this film as possibly one by a young bunch of director contemporaries who would all evolve via the same kinds of influences and make these kinds of films at Nikkatsu, Daiei and Toho studios that would define the style of film-making that went on in that country... certainly influenced by the outside forces in other countries who were dictating their market for them but also, I am sure, forging their own visual/audio language that are what we think of when we think of what they were doing from, say, the mid sixties to the mid seventies.

At least, that’s how I’m guessing it all went down anyway... without having seen any other of Kurahara’s movies to date but certainly having seen a fair few of his contemporaries flex their visual muscles. And Kurahara certainly lets loose with a certain amount of creative flair in this one. Shots composed beautifully for a 1.33:1 aspect ratio that are easily the equal of anything he and his contemporaries would have been designing for either Academy Ratio or whatever novelty form of ‘studio re-christened scope’ alternatives were the going rage some five or ten years later.

It’s really beautiful to behold and it doesn’t hurt that it’s got a score by semi-regular Kurosawa and Godzilla composer Masaru Satô either. And it’s also got some great performances in it too... Yûjirô Ishihara plays Jôji as a depressed but good natured man haunted by his fate, while at the same time also managing to balance that with a smart sheen of energetic enthusiasm, which makes him interesting to watch. Kitahara’s performance as Saeko is similarly haunted and depressed in its basic execution but where Isihara is all action and movement, Kitahara just uses a kind of static force to lift the scene and she is content to quitly smoulder and speak and act in a more minimalistic style which, offset against her leading man, is really something which holds your attention. It all just works very well.

I Am Waiting is not going to be everyone’s cup of Japanese green tea but certainly, if you like the look and feel of films by such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Seijun Suzuki, Sam Fuller and, I think, the young Ingmar Bergman, then I Am Waiting is probably going to go down very well on the tastebuds I reckon. Sip it slowly and savour every frame though... don’t gulp it down when you have no time to reflect afterwards. Certainly a movie I’ll be coming back to, I’m sure, and something I kind of wish I’d had the opportunity to be able to see a few decades ago when I was in my teens. Give it a watch if you get the chance.