Tokyo Drifter

Tetsuya Watari in a nifty powder blue suit

Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter, from 1966, is a delirious yakuza film that borrows tropes from Noir, Musical and Western films. One of over three score B films Suzuki churned out for Nikkatsu Studios during the 50s and 60s, the film is notable for its use of DayGlo, go go pop color. The lurid colors help the film, which has a very standard gangster plot, achieve an expressionistic feel akin to manga. The film's protagonist, Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), belongs to a gang that is disbanding and he claims he wants to leave the criminal life behind. but, as anyone who has ever seen a gangster film will suspect, leaving that life behind proves impossible for Tetsu. He falls for a rival gang's moll who works as a nightclub singer and this further complicates his attempts to go straight. Even though he attempts to embrace solitude as a lone drifter, old rivals continually try to assassinate him. Soon, even his old criminal boss has betrayed him. 

Tokyo Drifter's plot is hackneyed and its characterizations thin, but the film's power lies in its dazzling mise en scene. The film resembles the technicolor musicals of the 50s with its fluorescent colors. Not only does Tetsu's lady love get to warble a few tunes, but Tetsu has his own signature tune, heralding his status as a lone drifter, which he croons whenever he starts a journey. Hajime Kaburagi's bold jazz score adds to the film's texture. Musical motifs using harmonica and whistling makes one think that Kaburagi and Suzuki were tipping their hat to Ennio Morricone's work in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. 

Red as a harbinger of death

Tokyo Drifter would have been a run of the mill B film without Suzuki's touch. He often uses visual ellipses, jump cuts and the like, because he knows his audience can fill in the blanks between incidents. This helps give the film a propulsive momentum. Suzuki jazzes up a standard B picture because he knows it is familiar fare that needed a new approach. Nikkatsu's features were all assigned scripts that were expected to be filmed in under a month. Suzuki would eventually alienate the Nikkatsu hierarchy, but not before leaving behind, despite his working constraints, a series of remarkable features.