Rebel Samurai: Sixties Swordplay Classics
Criterion, $99.95
In 1965, there was a seismic cultural shift in Japanese cinema. With the release of Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion, the world of Japanese filmmaking took a bold leap into the modern. Ever since the worldwide release of Akira Kurosawa’s multiple-award-winning Rashomon in 1950, the chanbara (swordplay) film had been Japan’s No. 1 artistic export, it’s money in the bank, culturally speaking. Then came the mid-Sixties, with its questioning of accepted social conventions and its veneration of iconoclasm and individuality. And with that worldwide social tumult came a movement in Japanese film away from the principles of the old society and toward a new social and artistic form of expression. The films found in this box set are beautiful examples of this new direction in Japanese filmmaking, one that used the aesthetic and technical language of the swordplay films to expose and attack the culture that had lionized them. Hideo Gosha’s Sword of the Beast (1965) took a cue from Rebellion and expanded on its ideas, following the path of disillusioned Samurai warrior Gennosuke Yuki (played subtly here by Mikijiro Hira) as he is hunted by his clan as punishment for his supposed disloyalty. In Beast, the value of the individual is placed at a premium; in it we see the first flowerings of the Samurai antihero, a man willing to shake off his loyalty to the social code but not to his own sense of honor. The aesthetic developments at the heart of Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy put it in a place of prominence in this collection. The beautifully constructed shots, radical camera movements, and avant-garde silences at the film’s center heighten its sense of loss and its hero’s sadness in the face of unnecessary and apparently unending war. More than any of his contemporaries in Japan, Shinoda seemed to recognize the value in rebelling against the accepted technical confines of the genre and not just the thematic ones. The set’s last movie, chronologically, is Kihachi Okamoto’s brilliant, ironic Kill!, made in 1968. One can see the leaps chanbara films had made over the three years since Rebellion in Tatsuya Nakadai’s hangdog hero, Genta, a disillusioned samurai dry in humor and heavy in the eyelids. Nakadai is brilliant, single-handedly redefining the notion of the Samurai hero with his one-liners and dispassionate self-absorption. He’s a hero for the modern age: noble, but only to a point, and all but indifferent to the choices the world is offering. Face to face with a would-be assassin, he mumbles drily, “Kill or be killed. Either would just leave an unpleasant aftertaste.” There’s little authority can do to a man who yawns in the face of lingering doom. Surprising for a Criterion release, this set comes with minimal extras. Holiday shoppers will have to be content with interviews with the directors and extended essays from film critics. There are no documentaries, storyboards, or short films attached. Disappointing, but after eight hours of Samurai movies, a little break from the DVD player may not be the worst thing.Also Out Now
March of the Penguins (Warner Home Video, $28.98): Man, are they cute. And so like us, if you think about it.Upcoming
The Bad Sleep Well (Criterion, $29.95): Kurosawa’s brilliance wasn’t limited to swordplay pictures; he could also do film noir with the best of them. Toshiro Mifune stars as the executive out for revenge.This article appears in December 23 • 2005.