The Films of Yasuzo Masumura (2002)

Giants & Toys, Afraid to Die, Manji, Blind Beast

Gangsters, Beasts & Lovers

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Yasuzo Masumura Movies on DVD

Director Yasuzo Masumura is known by a much smaller fraction of film buffs than Akira Kurosawa. At first I thought he might have been a "B" filmmaker, slapped aside to the fringes of film history. But even if he was, he counts among his fans filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura, Blow-Up) and Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Taboo).

And like Kurosawa, he enjoyed working with the same collaborators again and again, over the course of his 50-odd films. He was interested in characters at the extreme of human behavior, which resonates universally, but especially in Japan.

He studied film and filmmaking in Italy, wrote about Italian master Luchino Visconti and the history of Japanese cinema. Returning to Japan, he assisted the great Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) and Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp) at Daiei Studios and received high praise from his colleague Oshima.

San Francisco's Fantoma Films has released four Masumura films on DVD for the first time. All four are presented in color and "Daieiscope" widescreen, and though the colors might not seem as bold as you'd expect, we have to remember that color from this period is notoriously difficult to restore (various shades fade and shrink faster than other shades). Fantoma has done a remarkable job refurbishing these great films to DVD.

The DVD box for Giants and Toys (1958, Fantoma, $29.99) rightly compares this film to the work of both Billy Wilder and Frank Tashlin. It's a colorful, high-strung look at Japanese commerce as three caramel candy companies compete for the top spot in Japan's marketplace. One company hires a flighty, hyperactive girl with bad teeth to be their spokesmodel, but she falls in love with the ad executive who hired her. He, in turn, is in love with a female executive at a rival company. Masumura drives the intensity of his comedy right up to the edge, asking his characters to give up their hearts, their dignity and their very lives for the Company.

In Afraid to Die (1960, Fantoma, $29.99), the famous Japanese author Yukio Mishima stars as a yakuza newly released from jail and awkwardly hitting the streets again after a failed attempt on his life. He falls in love with a ticket girl at a movie theater he owns and uses as a hideout. With his leather jacket and cool attitude, he tries to be the tough guy going to war with a crime boss, but continually blurs the line between passive and active, between respectable and criminal.

Presented in that lovely, overwrought style of the great melodramas by Douglas Sirk, Manji (1964, Fantoma, $29.99) tells the story of a twisted love quadrangle where the emotions run so high that any of the four would gladly lay down his or her life in the name of love. But is it really love, or just sick obsession? A bored housewife begins taking art classes and falls in love with a mysterious woman she meets there. Before long, they're having secret trysts. The woman's male lover enters the game and makes a blood pact with the housewife. Then the husband gets in on the game. Soon, everyone is threatening to kill everyone including themselves, and the woman makes everyone take sleeping drugs. You have to check subtlety at the door, but once you do, you'll love this overripe drama.

The bizarre thriller Blind Beast (1969, Fantoma, $29.99) is my favorite of the four, and by far the darkest. A blind sculptor kidnaps a beautiful model to assist him in making his greatest creation. His workshop is full of giant body parts: ears, legs, breasts, etc. The story keeps growing smaller, darker, more depraved, until the two main characters cavort together in darkness, pain and misery. A truly lurid classic.

Starring: Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Hitomi Nozoe, Yukio Mishima, Ayako Wakao, Kyoko Kishida, Yusuke Kawazu, Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku, etc.
Written by: Yoshio Shirasaka, Hideo Ando, Ryuzo Kikushima, Kaneto Shindo, Yoshio Shirasaka, Rampo Edogawa, etc.
Directed by: Yasuzo Masumura
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Running Time: 368 minutes (total)
Date: May 15, 2002