MY FACE RED IN THE SUNSET (English title: Killers on Parade)
1961: Original script by Shuji Terayama.
Here’s a strange bunch of professional assassins. They include a university graduate who dreams of modernizing the hitman business; a doctor who fits in assignments between his hospital work; a buxom lady with a pet goat called “End”; a cranky traditionalist who deplores the poor knife skills of the new generation; a traumatized veteran of the Battle of Guadalcanal; and a sensitive young poet in the mold of Terayama himself.
This bunch of murderous misfits gets hired by a corrupt construction magnate who plans to -– oh, forget it! The plot is irrelevant. According to Shinoda, Terayama cooked up the script on his own in three days and the film was completed shortly afterwards.
The luminous Shima Iwashita plays hard to get. The villainous tycoon snoozes with a magazine over his face, its cover featuring a photo of Robert Kennedy and the legend “How to succeed without really trying.” A hitman mentions a patent medicine by name, then adds “that was a commercial.” All is resolved somehow and the goat goes back to the wide open pastures of Hokkaido.
There are several musical numbers – ranging in style from doo-wop to folk – and plenty of jokes, paradoxes and Terayama-esque references. Nothing is taken seriously, killing, war, love, business, journalism, even movie-making. Or perhaps there is one thing that is taken seriously – horse-racing, one of Terayama’s lifelong obsessions.
My Face Red in the Sunset looks forward to the zany, camped-up thrillers and spy series of the mid-1960s – The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., etc. – but with a Terayama-esque touch of darkness. The film is a lot of fun and all concerned seem to have had a lot of fun making it.
TEARS FLOW DOWN THE LION’S MANE (English title: A Flame at the Pier)
1962: Original screenplay by Shuji Terayama, Masahiro Shinoda and Ichiro Mizunuma
Here is an unusual pick-up technique, but it seems to work. You see a charming young lady being troubled by a smallish dog snapping around her ankles. You grab the animal and hurl it against a fence. Now it’s not barking anymore, not moving at all in fact. The young lady smiles gratefully. You’re in luck.
Sabu is an impetuous young man who wants to roar like a lion, but ends up blubbing like a baby. The girl treats him generously, even though he works as a corporate enforcer and strike-buster whereas her Dad is a docker trying to form a union. In this Japanese version of On the Waterfront, Sabu is not a bad guy, but ends up doing bad things thanks to his misconceived loyalty to the thuggish war veteran Kitani who handles the company’s dirty work.
The lesson is obvious. Never-trust the older generation, especially when they claim to be your benefactor or try to coax you into bed.
As played by Takashi Fujiki, a former pop singer who had several hits with variations on The Twist, Sabu is sensitive, awkward and confused, yet also charismatic in a James Dean-ish way. He has musical talent too. His performance of the Terayama-penned rockabilly number, Girlfriend from Hell, is a knockout. Like Terayama himself, Sabu enjoys making things up. Fictionalizing is fun; reality is grisly. Unfortunately, he believes what the Mephistophelean Kitani tells him too and that eventually consigns him to destruction.
This could have been a story of redemption. Instead it’s an account of a journey to hell.
MY JOURNEY TO LOVE (English title: Epitaph To My Love)
1961: Screenplay by Shuji Terayama and Masahiro Shinoda, adapted from a novel by Ayako Sono.
They are young, smart and good-looking. They fall in love at first sight, but life has put obstacles in their way.
He is a trainee journalist, but also the kept man of a wealthy, middle-aged housewife whose elderly husband no longer satisfies her.
She is a waitress in a coffee-bar who is being courted by the son of successful businessman. The problem is her no-good wastrel of a Dad who fritters away all the money she earns at the race-track and then borrows more from her rich admirer.
“I wish I could live without worrying about money,” she says. “If only for one day.”
She goes to the cinema to see Strangers When We Meet, a story of marital trouble and illicit passion starring Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak. That’s the direction where this young couple are heading until fate intervenes…
At the cinema
In My Journey to Love, the Terayama-esque flavour is more subdued than in any other film he was involved in, though there are bits and pieces that match his preoccupations. The grubbiness of the cycling racetrack; our handsome hero admitting that he has smelly socks “and what’s wrong with that”; a lustful middle-aged woman; a black sailor singing a blues song in the Yokohama docks; jazz versus classical music; the authentic rough talk of the streets versus the pretentiousness of learning foreign languages.
The film is an attempt to create a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama, complete with slushy music and corny plot devices involving amnesia and hypnotism. Yet within the sentimentality and contrived suspense, there is a darker film struggling to emerge. A father sells his daughter to clear his gambling debts. A wealthy woman buys a handsome young man and deceives her husband, who thinks she is learning German. The reporters investigate bribery scandals, but make jokes about fatal traffic accidents. One tells another that the key to a successful marriage is to spend plenty of time in the red light district first.
The wealthy are snobbish, impotent, heartless. The poor can be feckless and cynical. In such a world, it is almost impossible to maintain your integrity if you have no money.
The four early Shinoda films that Terayama worked on are little known in Japan, let alone the rest of the world. They were churned out quickly – Shinoda released five films in 1961 alone – and hardly rank with the masterpieces that both were to create in the early seventies. Yet there is already something distinctive about these apprentice works. Compared with other Japanese avant gardists of the era, they are less solemn and ideological and are more willing to deploy wit and surprise. The songs are highly entertaining too.