Having showcased works by a number of lesser known directors - at least in this part of the world - it's time to break out the big guns at the ScreenAnarchy curated
Tokyo Drifters: 100 Years Of Nikkatsu
screening series. Yep, it's time for some Seijun Suzuki, with a rare big screen showing of his classic
Tokyo Drifter!
The Nikkatsu brass imposed strict budget limitations on Tokyo Drifter
as a means to curb director Seijun Suzuki's eccentric tendencies;
instead, the renegade director employed his relative lack of resources
to push his already bizarre aesthetic even further towards the
avant-garde and surreal, creating a pop-art masterpiece that only got
him in hotter water with his bosses. (Nikkatsu subsequently punished
Suzuki by forcing him to shoot his next two films in black and white.)
The plot is familiar enough -- former yakuza hitman Tetsu (blank-faced
pop singer Tetsuya Watari, wearing a powder-blue suit) is determined to
go straight, but is soon targeted by his former boss and an old rival --
but the execution is dazzling: a gloriously artificial, Day-Glo
gangster-movie fantasia that is equal parts Godard, Fuller, Fellini,
James Bond and MGM musicals. "Tokyo Drifter took pop art's sly
appetite for pastiche and appropriation and spun it into a cool web of
subliminal associations, a flabbergasting assemblage of tough-guy
kitsch, poetry, and self-mockery" (Howard Hampton).
An absolute classic, this one hits the screen Saturday at 10pm and you can be there for free! We've got two tickets to give away and to claim a pair all you need to do is
email me here and name the two film that Suzuki was forced to shoot in black and white as punishment for going crazy with this one!