Ahsoka

Gesundheit!

Ahsoka
Streaming August - October 2023
8 episodes

Warning: Spoilers within.

Okay, so of the messed up Star Wars TV shows that Disney has so far put out (and I’ve still not seen them all quite yet), Ahsoka is probably the best and most consistently entertaining one. Now, there’s a lot going on here which I don’t pretend to understand fully because, one thing I’ve not seen is any of the Star Wars animated TV shows (apart from the cartoon feature film which got released theatrically in the UK and I can’t remember much about it). That being said, there are a lot of flashback references to what one assumes are the important parts needed here, just remade into live action variants so... yeah, I think you can mostly get through this without having sampled the animated fayre, to be honest (and I’ve no real desire to finally catch up to the Droids or Ewoks TV shows, which I guess would have to be the first port of call if I was to do it properly). 

This one follows the complicated exploits of Ahsoka, Sabine Wren (a kind of Mandalorian Jedi-in-Training, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera Syndulla (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, no stranger to the fantasy and science fiction genres, for sure). 

Now, apart from wanting to see this before the new Star Wars movie is out soon (or possibly at time of publication of this blog review) the other big draw is, like the appearance by Ahsoka in the ‘almost pretty good’ series The Book Of Boba Fett (reviewed here) and The Mandalorian (reviewed here), the title character is played once again by one of my favourite modern actresses, Rosario Dawson. Now, admittedly it’s hard to see the Rosario for the Lekku here but, well, make up and prosthetics (and CGI) aside, it’s another role which shows the range and diversity of the actress. 

The story is basically a side quest to find an old friend of these characters, Ezra, but in the process, endangering the future of the ‘Empireless’ Star Wars universe by risking the return, as a side effect (or vice versa, actually), of a rather famous bad guy from the Star Wars novels who I had no idea had made it into any of the various TV shows over the years. Now I’ve only ever read, maybe less than 20 Star Wars novels in my life but, one of the three trilogies I read was Timothy Zahn’s sequence of novels which were, when they were being marketed in the early 1990s, being touted as the official sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy of films. And the bad guy in that series, being chased by Luke Skywalker and co, was Grand Admiral Thrawn... who returns, after a stint in some cartoons, in this show. I guess it’s a case of Thrawn but not forgotten. 

Story beats and mechanics aside, it’s a nicely put together show with good chemistry between all the many characters (including David Tennant voicing Ahsoka’s droid Huyang) and some nice cameos by the likes of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker (who somehow found time to train Ahsoka when he was in the land of the living, before he became Darth Vader) and C3PO. 

I have a few minor complaints about the show but the only one I’ll highlight is my disappointment with the text recap on the first episode. For some reason, the producers have decided to veer away from the one point perspective style scrolling text adopted by the original Star Wars movies and which were an obvious reference to the recaps on some of the 1930s and 1940s Universal theatrical serials, specifically the third and final Flash Gordon serial, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). That being said, the vision Ahsoka finds herself in during episode five certainly reminded me a little of the aesthetic of the light bridges used in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here). 

But there were also some really nice things in the show too. Two I’ll highlight are...

The use of violins or, in this case, ‘fiddles’ in the last episode to highlight the antics of four witches... honouring the time old tradition of iterating this kind of orchestration to accompany witches throughout the history of cinema. Indeed, I’d have to say that the scoring on Ahsoka by somebody called Kevin Kiner is much more in keeping with John Williams and George Lucas’ vision of using the kind of writing style of the golden age of Hollywood than any of the other Star Wars shows so far. 

Okay, the other thing is going to throw people who don’t know the rich history of the character but, there’s a ‘blast shield’ Jedi training scene and, yes, I get it, it’s a reference back to the original film (called Star Wars on its first release) when Luke is training in the Millennium Falcon... but it’s, oh, so much more than that and also comments on the title character’s fighting style throughout the series too. 

To explain... at one point during Wren’s training, Ahsoka asks her droid if he’s tried her in the Zatoichi style. As soon as she said that, I knew she was going to stick a helmet on the pupil, effectively blinding her (and there’s more, give me a minute)... 

So Zatoichi is a long running series of films, initially starring Shintaru Katsu, who played the blind masseur/gambler (and greatest swordsman in all of Japan) in 26 movies made between 1962 and 1989, not to mention in a hundred TV episodes in the 1970s and, after Katsu, at least three other Zatoichi films have been made to date (you can read my review of the first Zatoichi film here, with more to follow as I will be returning to that series of films shortly). I’m sure he’ll be back before too long as he gets rebooted for yet another generation. He had a sword cane and, if you want to see what looks like pretty much an exact replica of that sword cane, it’s in this show as the weapons Ahsoka gives herself and Wren to train with in that particular scene. The Zatoichi fighting style with the backwards sweep of the blade is also something which Ahsoka seems to adopt for the show. So I was really pleased with this. 

Of course, this is not the first time Zatoichi has been used in the modern Star Wars franchise. Donnie Yen’s character Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One was literally a version of Zatoichi himself dropped, into that story and it of course prompted many people on social media at the time to ask why Yen hadn’t officially played Zatoichi in a film. The time will come, is my guess. He’s already played yet another blind killer heavily based on Zatoichi in John Wick 4 (and its soon-to-be spin off, Cane). 

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, that single stroke victory after a Mexican standoff against a light sabre wielding droid is, I believe, a reference to the influential last scene in the Yojimbo sequel Sanjuro (reviews of both those Kurosawa films coming soon to the blog)... so that was another nice touch. 

The series ends on a kind of cliff hanger and I’m seeing the second season is due this year... so yeah, I probably will give that one a go too, as a voluntary thing because I thought this first season of Ahsoka was easily the best of those Star Wars shows I’ve seen so far and, well, there was never a dull minute. I’m now glad I reluctantly gave this one a chance. Maybe I should give Andor a quick look next?

On The Road (Zatôichi kenka-tabi)

Ichi Keen

On The Road (Zatôichi kenka-tabi)
Japan 1963 Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Daiei/Criterion Blu Ray Zone A 
 
So I’ve been inadvertently neglecting my Zatoichi watching and reviewing of late. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of that with this, the fifth of the 26 Zatoichi films starring Shintarô Katsu as the blind swordsman (not including his 100+ episodes of the TV show) and the first of the films to be directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda.

The film opens, pre-credits, with Zatoichi rumbling a gambling con. He slices a candle down the middle, extinguishing the light so he can get the upper hand, and deals with the whole roomful of gambling antagonists stating, in a shout out to the subtitle of a much later Zatoichi film in the series, that “Darkness is my ally.” As he finishes with his enemies, the title of the movie comes up and composer extraordinaire Akira Ifikube’s four note Zatoichi theme swells on the soundtrack. As the music and credits play out, we then follow Zatoichi’s progress 'on the road' as he encounters a fellow traveller and stops at the Edo period equivalent of a roadside diner with him to eat as the opening titles finish.

The traveller is on a mission to take Zatoichi to his boss so that said boss can negotiate for Zatoichi to join his side in a stand off against another boss in his town. Alas, it’s not long before this man becomes a casualty as three swordsmen kill him trying to take out Zatoichi. The blind man learns from the widowed wife of one of the men he has just despatched that they were just hired on the spot to get rid of Zatoichi. She seeks vengeance on Zatoichi but is obviously in no position to do anything about it... at least not right now.

We then stumble into another unrelated, at this point, subplot where our hero finds a dying man in a forest. A group of samurai are looking for a lady called Omitsu and have mortally wounded him as he was protecting her. The dying man begs Zatoichi to see Omitsu safely to Edo, just before he passes away. Zatoichi stumbles into her and, eluding the chasing samurai, takes her under his protection.

Like pretty much all of the Zatoichi films starring Katsu in the title role, as far as I can remember, Zatoichi always talks to himself, rendering his inner dialogue as an external monologue. Voice overs are rarely used in the Zatoichi movies, to let you know what he is thinking... Katsu always does it himself, in shot. This always has the trick of making him a much more likeable, easier to identify with character from the audience’s point of view, I suspect. Having these things rendered as such on the surface makes him seem less devious and more friendly... at least that’s how I always interpret these many instances of talking to himself that the character exhibits in the Katsu versions and he’s enough of a great actor to pull this stuff off without the audience, as far as I know, ever once questioning it. Works for me, anyway.

That being said, I think I spotted a rare, slight mistake in this one because, after Zatoichi has killed two of the pursuing samurai, he reaches around for Omitsu’s hand to lead her out of harm’s way. Since she is holding her hands up near her head, one wonders how Zatoichi would know to reach up there rather than drop his hand to where her hand would normally be expected to be. Now one could, of course, argue that the deductive radar system he has set up in his head from having his sight taken from him and which allows him to avoid or block the killing blows of his self-styled enemies could, in fact, easily tell just where someone’s hand is when they are at rest. I don’t know though... I think this is a bit of a stretch and a rare slip in the actor’s concentration which just got by the director at the time. Frankly, who can blame him or begrudge him that. Katsu does such a great job of playing a blind man over the decades that I think you have to cut him a little slack in the odd moment like that.

After this, of course, the two different sub plots become linked and Zatoichi is left to fight both sides of the big fight with one of the bosses, as they both try to gain the girl, who they believe is of some value, to use for either a reward or as a bargaining chip to buy the services of Zatoichi. It all gets integrated with various other plots threads dropped down in the early stages of the film and, of course, the widow of the samurai Zatoichi was forced to dispatch also plays a hand in the unfolding drama.

It’s a nice enough story with big flashes of action and Zatoichi taking out a heck of a lot of opponents towards the end... the majority of both warring factions. However, it’s not as flashy or overt in its cinematography as some of the more visually spectacular episodes in the film series and although there are some nice touches like a dragonfly taking off of a plant and then landing again (in reverse footage), bookending the flash of Zatoichi’s sword as he effortlessly takes out one or two of his enemies... the majority of the direction and camerawork is pedestrian. It doesn’t detract from the pacing and intrigue in any way... although I have to say that the actual through line on the story does seem a little fragmented and jumpy in certain stretches of the film. Almost like there were supposed to be more connecting scenes which never made it into the movie.

That being said, I did notice the occasional interesting shot at certain points. There's a cool shot on a transition where the camera is looking up and around the tops of the trees, almost as if searching for a sense of focus of the shot before meandering down to Zatoichi and Omitsu and then cutting to a tighter frame of them. That’s a pretty wild way of doing an establishing shot and I wonder what the reasoning behind shooting this one like that was. Another interesting visual flourish I noticed or, visual method at any rate, is that a fair few of the external location shots are taken from very low down, like the camera is in a ditch or a specially dug hole, to mask the bottom of frame with the landscape while the action plays out in top fifth sliver of the screen. It’s kinda interesting but it didn’t particularly, to my mind at least, gel with any of the other camerawork used in the movie, which seemed less special or focussed to a particular artistic expression than those sequences I just described.

At the end of the day, though, this is still a solid Zatoichi film and the director went on to helm a fair few more as the series progressed. The performances, as you would expect from this, are all pretty much faultless and Ifikube’s music, one of many scores he did for this series of films, while not particularly inventive or striking as some of the other composers who worked on these, is pretty reliable and packed full of emotion. On The Road is a pretty watchable entry in a truly magnificent series of movies about the blind swordsman. As I’ve noted before, the Criterion Blu Ray/DVD combination box set is the way to go when watching these films. If you haven’t seen these classics of Japanese cinema before, then... it’s definitely worth a purchase.

Zatoichi The Fugitive (Zatôichi Kyôjô-Tabi)

Dice, Dice, Baby.

Zatoichi The Fugitive (Zatôichi Kyôjô-Tabi)
1963 Japan
Directed by Tokuzô Tanaka
Daiei/Criterion Collection 
DVD Region 1/BluRay Region A

Warning: Yeah, some spoilers on this one too.

Here we are on the fourth of the Zatoichi films already, crammed into the same year and shot by the same director who did the previous movie, New Tale Of Zatoichi (reviewed here). Curiously enough, the way the shots are designed and function appeared, at least to me as I was watching it, to be the work of another director entirely... or perhaps a different cinematographer? It’s certainly not the same kind of approach this director took previously, although he does still exhibit a fondness for slicing up the scope frame into sections.

The film starts boldly with a shot of the sky which is quite peaceful looking, until Zatoichi walks straight into the frame from the side. This is not long shot, either, it’s quite up close and “in your face” with the character, so the effect is quite unsettling and must have been terrific when shown at cinemas.

We then have a nice change of pace for a Zatoichi movie in that, instead of gambling his way into some money to keep himself going, he here volunteers to be next challenger in a “who can beat the current champion” style wrestling match. Of course, his enhanced senses never fail him and he leaves heavier and more energetic victims in the dust of their defeat while he collects his cut of the money.

Then something happens.

As Zatoichi is enjoying a quiet, riverside siesta, a man who is obviously ignorant of his swordsmanship skills... attacks Zatoichi. Our hero tries to not get into a fight and offers ample chances for the man to back down but, in the end, Zatoichi slays his antagonist. As the man lays dying, Zatoichi finds out the name of his mother and takes her the reward money he finds has been offered on his own head. So here we see a trend beginning in the movie which relays to us that Zatoichi has now become both famous and infamous, depending on the side of the coin you are looking at. Dealing, as it does, with the idea of the tales of Zatoichi's exploits being retold in taverns and making him a kind of working class hero to various villagers. And, of course, his reputation with his sword also brings unwanted trouble from the constant amount of people who want to pit their own mettle against his.

What’s interesting is that the story cunningly sets up a constant threat to the lead character by putting a price on Zatoichi’s head, so that an action sequence can pop up at any time to change the pacing of the movie when required... but then doesn’t rely on this as the sole cause of conflict in the narrative. Instead, it shows us the side of the hero who is left, once gain, dealing with the consequences of the people he’s slain and the guilt he feels over that, especially when he was obviously attacked by someone who had no idea of the measure of the adversary he faced.

All this is done to some mighty fine camera work and shot design, it has to be said... the director splitting the shots quite strikingly in a horizontal manner. Indeed, most of the time, he deliberately subdues the vertical parts of the shots, strangely enough. Knowing the standard construction of the building interiors in this kind of cinema, this couldn’t have been the easiest task but he does this again and again throughout the movie by putting groupings of people across the obvious vertical patterns, in order to neutralise them somewhat, it seems to me. He also splits this into diagonals but, again, long horizontal oriented angles which cut nearly the entire widescreen frame into two sectors... top and bottom Often, one of the sectors, horizontal or diagonal, is deliberately just a large block of space to focus you on the area of the screen where something is happening and to highlight the importance of certain conversations or key bits of information etc.

Another interesting thing the director does, and this is even true at the very start of the film in the description I gave in the second paragraph, to some extent, is to have some pretty short establishing shots and then either force a different perspective into the shot, like in that opening sequence, or just cutting away immediately to extreme close ups of the characters within the scene. This can be extremely disorienting at times but... also, fun.

This director certainly loves playing with the juxtaposition of shapes and elements within a frame. There’s a beautiful shot where Zatoichi passes someone going up a flight of stairs and they both stop for a moment, directly next to each other, without looking around. Seen in close up of their profile, their bodies form a single mass as though a single trunk is sprouting two heads, each head looking outwards towards the opposite edges of the screen... before it cuts to a perfect reverse shot of exactly the same thing. Ingmar Bergman often used to play with bodies and faces within frame space in his films in this manner and he would have appreciated this particular composition, I’m sure.

Camerawork aside, this film has some classic moments of interest in it.

There’s a nice little moment where our blind protagonist throws a dice into a man’s saki bottle. He then flicks his sword and the bottle slowly falls apart from a vertical slice which splits the bottle into two halves and splits the dice in the bottle in half, all without hurting the man, who is still holding the bottle. This is where the Zatoichi films start to get a little over the top with their depictions of the lead character’s mystical sword skills... and why not? It's all great stuff and a welcome change of pace to some of the more poe faced characters inhabiting some of the more traditional chanbara movies.

The fight sequence at the end really piles on the sword fodder as a trapped Zatoichi begins a brilliant fight that starts in a deserted house, then continues outside, then into some water (a nice bit of sword and splashery here), then into some long grass and then back into some sand before Zatoichi takes on the lead strongman (which most of these movies seem to have). Actually, the samurai in question bears a remarkable resemblance, to these Western eyes, to a young Toshiro Mifune when he was appearing in films like Yojimbo and Sanjuro, although it would of course be several years before Mifune would guest star in this series of films to go head to head with Shintarô Katsu’s beloved blind swordsman.

In the final fight, the new guy is almost a match for Zatoichi and, in a rare display of mortality for the Zatoichi character, nearly defeats him. In fact, he even breaks Zatoichi’s sword cane so it’s useless, something which I still think contradicts the continuity of a later film in the series (I’ll let you know and shout it out in no uncertain terms when I get there again). However, Zatoichi isn’t finished yet and, as the big guy comes in for the kill, Zatoichi strikes with a small dagger he has as a hidden extra in the top of his cane... something which I don’t seem to remember seeing in Ichi’s arsenal either before or after this film, to be honest. The film is a little more graphic in a way, at this point, as the up-close-and-personal killer thrust leaves Zatoichi’s brow spattered with his adversary’s blood. The films kinda leap between graphic goriness and more subtle approaches, almost randomly, throughout the entire run of films if I remember, and this certainly isn’t the most graphically violent of the Zatoichi movies by a long shot (Takeshi Kitano even stole a most memorable piece of violence from one of the later films for his own take on the character, decades later, if I’m remembering correctly).

The film is well scored by series semi-regular Akira Ifikube and also very leanly spotted*, like a lot of Ifikube’s scores. This allows him to really emphasise certain points in the movie, such as this end fight where Zatoichi is wounded in the arm to a flurry of Ifikube bombast on the score. A kind of protracted musical sting that works very well. And, of course, that means the four note Zatoichi theme, in a slightly different variation, gets a work out too, throughout the course of the picture.

What more can I say? Zatoichi The Fugitive is a classic Zatoichi movie and we even get to hear some of his one-line wisdom... “Life's dirt sticks to everyone” although, to be fair, it really doesn’t go down too well in the context of who he says this to in the film. Definitely a great watch for Zatoichi and chanbara fans alike. One of the best in the series.

*Spotting is where a composer will sit down with someone, usually the director, and work out which parts of the movie will be scored, where and when the various cues for each section will start and finish, and discuss other things like the intensity of the music and its purpose in a scene. Quite often, and Hollywood composer Jerry Goldsmith was a master of this, it’s as much about working out where you don’t put music, as where you do.

New Tale Of Zatoichi (Shin Zatôichi Monogatari)

Love Is Blind

New Tale Of Zatoichi 
(Shin Zatôichi Monogatari)
1963 Japan
Directed by Tokuzô Tanaka
Daiei/Criterion Collection 
DVD Region 1/BluRay Region A

The third in this series, The New Tale Of Zatoichi was the first of these movies to be shot in colour. Despite the title implying that the film is a brand new adventure for Zatoichi, there are still lingering elements from the story arc in the previous two movies which are brought back into play alongside any new ingredients in the plotting.

After a brief and, curiously, irrelevant pre-credits sequence leading into the titles, the film begins with three armed goons coming after Zatoichi. They have ties to Kambei (one of them being his brother), who Zatoichi killed at the end of the last movie, presumably following on from that abrupt cut (both physically and in terms of the editing) which provided the movie with an extra denouement after the typical end battle sequence was already over. Zatoichi kills one of these antagonists and the other two run off.

The other main story  element of this movie involves trouble when Zatoichi returns home to the original village where he grew up... he even gets to stay with his grandma for a few nights. However, when he becomes the guest of the sensei who taught him his skills with the sword, and the sensei’s sister, things take on a sinister turn. It seems that his former tutor is involved with a group of fugitives called the Tengu Gang, and is helping him work a scam by kidnapping a particular student of his school where he knows he can get a large ransom. He’s also trying to marry his sister off to an “appropriate” partner, but she is resistant of his choice, which seems to be mostly based on wealth and good standing in the community.

This is a movie which shows Shintarô Katsu’s Zatoichi like we rarely see him in the series. For example, for a good deal of this film, he doesn’t bother using his cane sword to get around, instead keeping it holstered on his back, ready for a quick underhand draw when required... the sword cane comes back in use as an actual cane for a little while about half way through the movie but it’s a curious absence through most of it and I wonder if certain people in the studios were trying to lose it as a character prop... which would have been a shame since it’s such a notably iconic artefact of the Zatoichi movies. Obviously, though, this idea didn’t stick... thankfully.

Another way in which this title differs a little to the other films shows itself in a scene where Zatoichi roughhouses a villain, with his hands, to confirm information... never once drawing his sword in the encounter. This is an unusual move for a cunning fox like Zatoichi and it seems totally out of character for him. I don’t remember him doing this in any of the other movies but I may be proved wrong in time as I go through them again... watch this space.

Once again, Zatoichi is asked by a girl to marry her in this one. This seems to be happening a lot in the very early films for some reason. Zatoichi finally agrees and vows to give up his yakuza lifestyle, at exactly the wrong moment as he is once again caught up by Yasuhiko, the brother of Kanbei from the previous films. Zatoichi throws down his sword but Yasuhiko doesn’t want to kill an unarmed man, so they have a wager in front of Zatoichi’s bride to be. On a roll of the dice, Zatoichi will either be left alone or give Kanbei’s brother his arm. When Zatoichi loses, Kanbei’s brother has been so moved by the plight of Zatoichi and his bride to be that he lies to Zatoichi about the roll and pretends to lose, leaving our hero to his fate. When Zatoichi’s new love confirms the suspicion that Yasuhiko let him live, he goes to thank him and talk to him to make things right... too late though because his former sensei has already killed Yasuhiko. Now Zatoichi realises what’s going on and leaps to the rescue of the kidnapped student, with a series of incidents which will have repercussions for him as he realises his ultimate fate is as a wandering yakuza, and not with his suitor.

As usual with these movies, the direction and cinematography is really great.

This one has a fair few static shots of Zatoichi in long shot wandering the landscape, walking from one side of frame to the next and occasionally encountering people along the way. This would become a kind of staple shot to emphasise the character’s travelling/wandering status as the series progressed, of course.

The director works hard to include diagonal lines in the compositions, using them to separate various elements on the screen and sometimes introduces details composed of such angles within cuts of shots. For example, a cut from Zatoichi and some fellow travellers forming three uprights to a closer, mid shot of the same grouping from a different angle, shows the director utilising the heights of the characters to make a diagonal composition running down from the right to the left of the screen. To do this, he has to have one half of a married couple go past Zatoichi on the road before the cut, and then using that character being closer to the camera from the alternate angle to make sure this person is higher than Shintarô Katsu on the frame. This is all good stuff but never seems laboured... things just happen seemingly naturally, although this is obviously not the case.

This director, like Kenji Misumi in The Tale Of Zatoichi (reviewed here), also makes good use of verticals to split the screen. This is obviously evident with the interior architecture of the period being depicted, as you would expect, but he also manages to carry this on, as he does his diagonals, in some of the exterior locations too.  One way he does this, for instance, is by having the faces of two characters having a conversation in close up at the extreme edges of the scope frame, with diagonal vertical trees of a forest taking up the dead centre space between the two. Another sequence where this kind of compositional bent is nicely displayed is in an early fight scene in long shot, where almost all of the action takes place on the left half of the screen, the design only broken when one foe stumbles from the left hand into the right of the centre. Really interesting use of space throughout this film... and in a fair few of these particular movies, to be sure.

Other points of note for Zatoichi afficionados are as follows...

This is the first of the films to show off Shintaru Katsu’s aspirational musical skills... as he starts playing a borrowed shamisen and begins singing along with it, the lyrics echoing the plight and strife of his lowly character. A few of the films have similar scenes written in for Katsu to display his prowess with the instrument, but this is not as elabourate as some of those scenes get in later films.

This films also has a repeat of Zatoichi’s “candle trick”, which he demonstrated in the first film. This time there are four candles in question, with Zatoichi sitting in the middle of the four which are arranged as the corners of a square. A fast flick around him with his sword which he instantly sheaths gives us another jokey replay of the old “fastest draw in the West joke” (“Wanna see it again) in that, over a period of ten seconds or so, the heads of each candle slowly drop to the floor to give the impression Zatoichi has sliced through them at speed without knocking them over... one fallen candle on the floor left curiously alight... to allow lighting for the camera, of course. I never get tired of these kinds of gags as they come up throughout the series.

Legendary composer Akira Ifikube returns for his second of many outings with the character (he had previously scored the first movie in the sequence too) and he once again uses the four note Zatoichi theme he created in that first one as leitmotif for the character, being a kind of downbeat parody, almost, of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. There are some nice organ solos of this main theme present in one or two of the scenes too. The Ifikube scores in this particular film series aren’t my favourite ones for the Zatoichi character but they are solid and give the character a consistency with previous installments that the music doesn’t give him in the ones composed by other people.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one. Once again, the film ends of a note of tragedy with the foes vanquished but at a moral cost to the characters who are left behind to watch the dust settle. So far the films series has been consistently good and it’s no wonder that they became so popular, so quickly. However, if memory serves me right, the best is yet to come. Stay tuned in to this blog for more Zatoichi goodness soon.

The Tale OF Zatoichi Continues (Zoku Zatôichi Monogatari)

Ichi keen!

The Tale Of Zatoichi Continues 
(Zoku Zatôichi Monogatari)
1962 Japan
Directed by Kazuo Mori
Daiei/Criterion Collection 
DVD Region 1/BluRay Region A 

I mentioned in my review of the first film in this series that, at the end, Zatoichi leaves his cane sword behind in the town in which he reluctantly killed his samurai friend as a kind of atonement... but the studio presumably hadn’t counted on the success of that first movie because, within that same year, this sequel was already released into the world. Therefore, that last little bit is not referred to again in this story and, right from the outset Zatoichi has a, presumably, new cane sword to defend himself with (a fact I seem to remember may get contradicted later in the series... but I’ll let you know when I get there).

This story is, in some ways, a continuation of the first but, really, only in terms of details such as locations and recurring characters. The first half of the film is set in a different town and this movie really is the first to set up the idea that Zatoichi is a wandering masseur. In The Tale Of Zatoichi (reviewed here...) he did indulge his new samurai friend in this but, in this movie, he is clearly taking money for his services... and that part of his established character is now a constant throughout the series, as much as his blindness, his gambling hustles and his expert swordsmanship.

The atmosphere is slightly different from the start in that the soundtrack is not composed by Akira Ifikube, like the first and a fair number of the others in the series are, but by Ichirô Saitô, who also contributed to later films, plus some of the Sleepy Eyes Of Death series (many of which are also reviewed on this site). It’s a different vibe but I think I almost prefer it over the Ifikube and I’m glad both composers got to do work on this franchise.

The film has less to do than the first one in terms of the set up of the character and gets on with the story. Also, in this regard, in terms of having more action sequences placed at key points through the narrative and building towards a final, “all against one showdown”, for the end part of the film... or in this case, not quite the end. I’ll get to that a little later, though.

Curiously, the style used by the previous director, of keeping the camera close to the actors and following them around, is eschewed in favour of more master shots from a distance. There is still camera movement but this is obviously slower as the shots can, for the most part, take in wider parts of the environment the characters are cohabiting. This also, and I’d never thought about this properly before I rewatched this in comparison with the first movie, gives the film a more voyeuristic feel... you are watching the action from a distance and judging it, rather than being in the thick of it and reacting with the characters on screen. That’s kind of an interesting trick to use to change the pacing of a movie and the way it is perceived, I suspect. So in this film, the dynamics of the shot are created purely by the movements of the actors and the way they fill the space in the general composition of the shots... as opposed to the somewhat visceral but different approach of the first.

Another thing is that the compositions are not all based on verticals as the first one was. The film begins with Zatoichi being a ”blind” witness to something a gang doesn’t want generally known. As the gang try to kill him, they learn that he is going to the location of the first film, to pay his respects to the samurai he killed one year earlier. They team up with the boss who has survived Zatoichi’s intervention in the last movie and, by the time Zatoichi gets to the previous films location, in the second half of what is actually quite a short movie... that’s when we start to see some of the vertical style compositions revisited. These are often used to show the separation of attitudes or classes of characters split within the same physical frame... which is a good way to do it.

There are some really cool shot designs and elements of beauty like this found throughout the film. Such as a beach fight where the incoming tide gently laps at Zatoichi’s feet as he takes on a series of opponents... most of whom run when they figure out our hero’s prowess with a sword. And the vertical jutting objects motif is played out in the final big battle where all of the characters are dwarfed by the foreground details and seem almost like ants against this forced perspective. Very nice.

There’s also some great little moments where the writers build on Zatoichi’s character traits as the series starts progressing. For example, a man who sneaks up on Zatoichi to kill him has his thunder stolen when Zatoichi asks him the time... just as he is about to strike a death blow. Realising his blind opponent knows exactly where he is and could kill him in a snap, the man backs down and engages in conversation instead. This not only shows Zatoichi’s abilities well but also his compassion... he could have just cut the man down where he was standing but, instead, fashioned an excuse for the man so his would-be killer would not lose face and not have to engage him.

There’s also a brilliant piece of what people these days would call stunt casting. The plot also involves an outlaw on the run from the authorities who also wants to kill Zatoichi for some, at first, unspecified reason. He is embroiled in Zatoichi’s past somehow and the two were once rivals for the love of Zatoichi’s life. I thought the guy looked very familiar when he came on and the role turns out to be played by Tomisaburô Wakayama (credited in the film under the pseudonym of Jo Kenzaburo). You may remember him more for the role he perfected 10 years later, as the infamous Ogami Itto, the lead protagonist in the Lone Wolf And Cub (aka Baby Cart) films. In a twist moment in this movie (don’t read further than this if you don’t want to know) he plays Zatoichi’s long embittered brother... which is not so much of a stretch as it happens because, in real life, he really was Shintarô Katsu’s brother and, when you see him this young and with his hair significantly different, the resemblance between the two of them is much easier to see.

Wakayama’s character, Nagisa no Yoshiro, actually wounds Zatoichi quite badly during the end sequences of the film... one of the few times this happens this badly to the main character of this series (although there is a quite spectacular Django tribute in one of the later films, if memory serves me correctly... I’ll get to it when I rewatch). The battle between Zatoichi and various opponents near the end sees the start of the “overwhelming odds” battles that mark both this and the Baby Cart series of films. Zatoichi’s body count in this final battle is around 15 on-screen kills, which is quite modest for him... but this is where this kind of battle spectacle really starts in this series of films, I think.

The end of the film is abrupt and leaves a few loose ends. After he finds his romantic interest from the first film is going to be getting married to someone we are on edge, wondering what will happen to the two of them. Will they get together? The question is never answered because the next battle scene gives us a very abrupt ending which finishes just before the battle properly starts. A very angry Zatoichi, for reasons I won’t reveal here, is surrounded by a bunch of men including the boss who he didn’t kill in the first movie. However, he has made up his mind now that this man must die. He lunges ostentatiously at the opponent, he might have sliced him or he may not but, knowing Zatoichi like we now do, it’s pretty much inevitable that every other man in this confrontation is going to lose their life. It is, however, a confrontation we never see...

The film abruptly cuts there, leaving the battle to play out in our imagination... not to mention leaving a few loose ends too. It’s both a powerful ending and a let down at the same time. We really want to see Zatoichi in action again but, honestly, the fury we imagine for ourselves is surely greater than anything the director could have captured on celluloid here. As I watched it, I was reminded of a movie I’d recently seen at the cinema... a little thing called The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (reviewed here). If you remember the ending of that movie, you’ll realise that this is exactly the same tactic that the director of that one has employed as we have here in this one. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we see Spidey throw the first punch (well, metaphorically) at the Rhino, the credits roll and we play out in our minds the rest of the battle. We know Spider-Man’s going to win... it’s moot. It’s purely used to give a dramatic punchline to the film and I suspect the ending of The Tale Of Zatoichi Continues involved a similar creative decision. Whatever.  For the Zatoichi movie at least... it kinda works.

This would be Zatoichi’s last black and white film... his popularity pushing him into colour stock from his third feature. As always with the Zatoichi movies, or most of them, this one is a definite recommend but I would add the caveat that you should probably check out the first movie before sitting down with this one... since this particular entry in the series is very closely linked to it and makes references to the first which you would want to know about when you are watching. Another great Zatoichi film and, once again, Criterion’s new blu ray transfer is the absolute best way to watch this other than seeing an actual print in a good cinema. Another good entry in the chanbara genre, I think.

The Tale Of Zatoichi (Zatôichi monogatari)

Blind, Sealed & Delivered

The Tale Of Zatoichi 

(Zatôichi monogatari)

1962 Japan

Directed by Kenji Misumi

Daiei/Criterion Collection 

DVD Region 1/BluRay Region A

I’ve loved the Zatoichi movies ever since I became aware of the character on the cinematic release of Takashi Kitano’s modern update back in 2003. I bought the, by then very cheap, UK releases of a few of the original movies in a sale at HMV and, after having watched those and realising why the UK versions were so cheap (you just wouldn’t believe the prints and transfers on the old Artsmagic DVDs at the time) I then proceeded to upgrade, and also buy the remaining films, on the two US labels who were issuing them around then... Home Vision Entertainment (a kind of sister label to Criterion, from what I can understand) and Animeigo (who also released the first, and sadly only the first, season of the Zatoichi TV show).

The one bone of contention was the film Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage. 

It had never been issued in either the USA or the UK, although many people thought it had been released a couple of times over here in England. This assumption is quite understandable, given the fact that a film “called” Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage was indeed released and, I believe, re-released in the UK. However... and this is bad enough on the first release but totally inexcusable on the reissue... the film being released as that title in the UK was actually Zatoichi At Large with an incorrect title on the packaging and subtitles. How they managed to screw it up quite so badly is anyone’s guess. Go figure!

So, up until now, the only way of getting a decent print of Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage was by getting it from Japan. Which I promptly did at the time but, yeah you guessed it, there are no English subtitles on that edition. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of a pain with a Zatoichi movie, because they do get quite formulaic from film to film and you can usually figure out what’s going on in them without necessarily needing to know what’s coming out of the various actors’ mouths. However, when I tried this approach with Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage, I found that the film deviated from formula enough that I really wasn’t getting all of it... so that has been a thorn in my side for a while.

And now, the always reliable Criterion Collection has come to the rescue with a big and beautifully packaged boxed set including all 26 of the original Zatoichi movies in a combination DVD/Blu Ray set and, despite the high price for this item, it was well worth it for me to finally lay this ghost to rest. So I’m going to be re-watching the entire series and reviewing them on here starting from... now.

Zatoichi was a minor character referred to in a story by Kan Shimozawa and developed for Daiei studios with Shintarô Katsu in the lead role. This may have partially been due to the success of a film made the year before and also starring Shintarô Katsu, where he played the main lead and antagonist in The Blind Menace (reviewed here). If you’ve seen this, you’ll know the character he plays in that one is a much more sinister and selfish character than the Zatoichi character he developed over the decades... but the fact that he was studying and picking up the body language of a blind man probably helped him quite a bit when he started building on that for his Zatoichi role, no doubt. 

This first film is absolutely brilliant in terms of both the beauty of the shot design and the pacing of the story. It’s quite short in the action department, compared to the bloodbaths you would start getting fairly soon in the series, but it’s at no point a boring film and it’s a great introduction to the character. 

We are first introduced to him over a strange, posterised credits sequence, which might have worked well if this film had been shot in colour but which is fairly questionable in terms of a mono movie. Here we see Zatoichi doing his usual comic shenanigans of what a blind man traversing narrow bridges etc. would get up to in as hilarious a manner as possible... almost clumsy, in a way. This, of course, undercuts and contrasts with the expert sword skills and hypersensitised senses that we learn the character possesses through the course of the movie. It’s always a nice contrast and Katsu plays with this comic contradiction at various points all the way through the film series... he got it down to a fine art fairly quickly, in fact. 

We next go into what would be a typical Zatoichi scene as the series progressed... that of a blind man conning a gambling den out of their money, playing dice. In this first one, which establishes very quickly the cunning of the character, we see him set up the other players by making them think they’re taking advantage of his blindness. When he turns the tables after the stakes have grown, they are put in a position where any accusations of him cheating, which he technically isn’t, would admit their own complicity in trying to cheat him. So this is a nice introduction to the character and helps establish that, while he tends to act the fool a lot, he really is quite a shrewd person.

We also see his tender side as he tries to help various people and develops a friendly, mutual respect and admiration with a samurai dying of consumption, who he will have to fight at the movie’s end. The samurai doesn’t want to die of an illness so, when he forces Zatoichi to kill him at the denouement, we know that he has died exactly as he wanted to... although our hero is clearly upset with the way events have turned out. Upset to the point where he leaves his famous, hidden “cane sword” with a boy at the end of the movie. Actually, this is a sure sign that Daiei didn’t have any idea just how successful this film would be, since he would have to take up the sword cane once again for the next film in the series. There’s even one movie which has a story built around the tensile strength of the cane sword, if I’m remembering correctly... but that’s for another review.

The direction is strange on this one, but beautiful. For instance, the shot design is all built around verticals, which is a natural given the Japanese architectural style of the period in which this was set, I would guess. But, even so, the director uses this to frame both people and objects and, also, uses it to express shifts in perspective within a shot. He even, at one point, has the protagonist stop to monologue in the only gap visible to the camera in a line of bamboo poles. This is great stuff. 

The curious thing about the mise-en-scene though, to my mind, is the way in which the camera seems to follow everybody around in medium shot. The Tale Of Zatoichi is shot in a full width, 2.35:1, or close to that, aspect ratio but, rather than pull the camera back and take in the full extent of the action in slower moving or static shots, the director decides to follow the various characters around. I was scratching my head while I was watching this, trying to figure out why, and all I can come up with is that the extra movement in the shot adds a kind of dynamism which then offsets the need for full on action sequences, until we get to those properly at the end of the movie. It’s not that distracting, just strange when you notice it first. It’s as valid a way as any, of course... so good for him.

The musical score by the master composer Akira Ifikube, of Godzilla fame (he even invented the famous roar) is not a masterpiece but it’s engaging and does have a few, sit up and listen, stingers at certain points. He’s not my favourite composer for this particular series but he did develop a kind of leitmotif for the main character which he came back to time and time again on the Zatoichi films he scored. Definitely stuff to listen out for if you’ve only heard his kaiju eiga compositions.

And there you have it... a fascinating and strong, scene setting first entry in a very long running series of chanbara, released the following year after Kurosawa’s Yojimbo... and possibly riding in the wake of that one, to some extent. Daiei had a hit on their hands and Shintarô Katsu was destined to become... probably the most popular actor in Japan. Criterion’s new Blu-Ray print is sharper and much better looking than I was expecting this film could look. If you can afford it and you have a player which can handle either Region 1 DVDs or Region A Blu Rays, I would definitely recommend this beautiful set and certainly recommend this brilliant movie. I’ve been following this character’s exploits for over a decade now... don’t miss out on these epic films.

The Blind Menace

The Phantom Blind

The Blind Menace
1960 Japan
Directed by Kazuo Mori
Anime Eigo DVD Region 1

Two years before the big screen incarnation of the Zatoichi character started in a franchise that would last, in various forms, to this day, there was Suginoichi, The Blind Menace. A young actor who’s star was rising a little less speedily than you might, in hindsight, have imagined, took on the role of Suginoichi, a blind masseur who schemes and cleverly manipulates those around him as a skilled hero might... except that he is anything but a hero and his machinations lead him through the paths of theft, extortion, blackmail, rape and murder.

Starting with a number of scenes depicting Suginoichi and his best friend in childhood, the character grows up on a fairly astute transition shot (for the time) and turns into the young actor I mentioned... the not quite yet, but soon to be legendary... Shintarô Katsu.

Katsu, of course, is the man who played Zatoichi for the first 26 of the movies and 100 episodes, too, of the Zatoichi TV show (wish AnimeEigo would release series’ 2 - 4 now). Here is a film role which he throws himself into with relish, studying blind people and utilising that in a performance which is ulitimately very similar to the Zatoichi role he perfected two years later. A kind of cross between a comic, pantomime, almost slapstick, blind man... and with the inner workings betraying a more serious side. In the Zatoichi films that serious side manifests as a warm heart, astonishing hearing and his skill with his sword cane. Here the warm heart is absent and, where that would later develop in Zatoichi, here Suginoichi’s interior is all animal cunning and, again, great skill... not with a sword cane but with his ability to see how any situation can be worked for his own advantage.

Katsu, of course, does this really well and the film was enough of a hit that it inspired the more heroic slant on the character and the Zatoichi series became, of course, popular box office gold, owing no small debt to the lead performer’s lovable and dominating (yet humble) personality, which made him a greater known name in Japan than various iconic Japanese actors who are more famous in the West - the likes of Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai, for example (three personal favourites, although Katsu’s performances are infectious but, I plan on rewatching and reviewing the entire Zatoichi series next year so... I’ll leave all that until then).

The film is directed by Kazuo Mori, himself a director who would become an old hand on the Zatoichi series of films and, right from the start, with his long tracking sequences and ability to stay with a character in a continuous, fluid shot rather than chop everything into smaller sections, he pulls you in with the way he captures details and the expressions of the performers. The camerawork is typical of this director and this kind of film and it gives an almost voyeuristic feel to it on some level, as things are revealed to the audience which suddenly reveal something more about the clever treachery of the character as he spins his little webs. The character Katsu is playing here is certainly no lovable rogue and his actions are without remorse and unconscionable. He plays the part so well and I was impressed but wonder a little how this performance catapulted him into the other side of the coin with the Zatoichi character. I know I’m bringing with me the baggage of seeing him play the Zatoichi character around about fifty times but audiences at the time didn’t have that luggage to carry with them.

Well, anyway, however it happened, it certainly might not have occurred without the preparatory groundwork Katsu did here with this character... so this is quite an important movie.

Fans of chambera might not neccessarily be drawn to this movie. Certainly, it’s not an action picture and has none of the poetic choreography of violence that, say, a Sleepy Eyes Of Death movie might have. Nor does it allign itself with the brutal, naturalistic view of a Kurosawa period piece either. What it does have, however, is a group of very good actors, the almost but not quite over-the-top personality of Shintarô Katsu and a fiendish dose of high cynicism running through the picture like a tainted vein. This is the kind of character that Zatoichi might have been when he was a young yakuza but it’s much harder to imagine Ichi as a ruthless plotter who takes no prisoners... however, when Katsu puts his mind to it, nothing seems unbelievable for too long... with such a talented individual committed to making you believe in him.

And that’s about it on The Blind Menace, I think. For some reason, although I liked the movie a lot, I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it’s the near perfect tone achieved in the film that I found so arreeable but, whatever it is, it’s certainly got a strong recomendation from me. If you’re a fan of Katsu and especially his role in the Zatoichi movies, then you really owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you’re not familiar with the great man’s works then this is a fine first in the world of the blind masseur, a role which Katsu would cherish and perfect for almost three decades. This is where it begins...