Not mistakenly, the jidaigeki (to be translated as “historical drama”) and the chanbara They were long considered the most representative genres of Japanese cinema. Not surprisingly, for a long time about half of the productions were costumed. Over the decades, among many highs and some significant low points – among the latter, post-war censorship and a tiredness of historical genre productions, a consequence of the crisis of the film industry of the Land of the Rising Sun in general, between the end of the Seventies and the Nineties – there have been numerous re-meditations and contaminations with other filmic trends and ideas: from epic tones to more intimate ones, from minimalist experimentalism to more political works, passing through the dialogic encounter with the acrobatics of wuxiapian Sino-Hong Kong, the wilderness of the Western or European dramatic interiority.
On the occasion of the success of the show on Disney Plus (here is our review of Shogun), some are proposed below works on the samurai that are unknown but no less relevant, listed in chronological order, from the 1940s up to the present day. Inevitably, they are not titles that can be considered absolutely among the best samurai films – already, recently, the subject of the 5 samurai films to see if you like Rise of the Ronin – but five less known to the general public, one of which is a real own wildcard choice with which to dare and stimulate reflection on the status of this subgenre. Everyone, It goes without sayingcoming from Japan.
The men who put their foot on the tiger’s tail
It’s not easy not to think of Akira Kurosawa when talking about samurai films. This name is associated with some of the most important titles of the genre and more generally in the history of twentieth-century cinema. THE his early works, often not given much consideration, show already from the first years of activity – after having been assistant director in around twenty productions – an expressiveness and poetics that are already out of scale. Among them, Men who put their foot on the tiger’s tail (also known as The men who walked on the tiger’s tail), from 1945, is one of the least popular, also due to its troubled events: shot with makeshift means, the film he was hindered by both local military censors and the American occupation forces.
Until the Treaty of San Francisco (1951, the year in which Japanese cinema finally left its territories to approach the world) the work remained essentially unknown and once it arrived in theaters the following year, it failed to establish itself above all because, produced years before, I look “old” in front of works by the same director, at the cinema at that moment (The idiotbased on Dostoevsky, and, shortly thereafter, Live).
Adaptation of a drama kabuki (in turn taken from a work noh of the late fifteenth century), the film differs from the original text not only for some more comical elements, seen out of place for a text of a historical nature, but above all for the almost rebellious spirit of its author. Kurosawa seems to be having fun in the make fun of and mock power, a sort of almost untouchable sacredness, in showing the critical issues of a nation, especially its cultural past and its traditions. A revolutionary project in its own way (few had thought of putting certain dogmas in such a bad light), a forerunner of themes and characters that would recur in his filmography – with an eye, once again, on the artistic avant-gardes, such as expressionism, evident above all in the use of lighting and scenography.
Zatoichi’s story
The name of the blind samurai is not a new name for those more accustomed to contemporary oriental cinema: Zatoichi, important cultural icon for the time, he was at the center of the feature film of the same name directed and starring Takeshi Kitanoplus a further chapter, the twenty-seventh, of the saga than a modern remake – there are twenty-eight films focused on ronin (samurai without a master) wanderer, all more or less independent even if linked by a weak but still present horizontality. The first of them, Zatoichi’s storydirected in 1962 by Kenji Misumi, works in an exceptional way on the construction of the protagonist’s restless psychology, a sort of point of reference for the public of those years.
In a historical moment of reconstructions, disillusions and identity crises for the whole of Japan (at the center of the works of many other Japanese authors, such as, among many, Nagisa Oshima), Zatoichi – a great Shintaro Katsu – does not hide the ambiguities and makes it even more labile border between romantic idealism and crude decadence, between freedom of independence and devastating loneliness. Contradictions of those who, after all, are not a real samurai and live for themselves, gamble but are ready to defend the weakest, not out of honor but almost out of a sort of respect for those who, like him, he is relegated to the “last”.
The world described in the first (the best) chapter of the series is dirty and corrupt, forces violence and spares no one: perfect scenario both for the more action show – especially in the final lines, where the direction gives its best – and for the more introspective focus, aided by an excellent editing that never loses sight of the tension that derives from the details, from gestures. While encountering the inevitable clichés of this type of narrative, Zatoichi’s story finds its ideal dimension above all in the direct and concise simplicity that the serial model prefers.
Where the crows fly
As mentioned, samurai cinema has, over time, crossed paths with different genres. L’crossroads with the western, for example, offered new expressive possibilitiesespecially at the beginning of the Seventies. Where the crows fly (best known by its original title, Goyokin) is a perfect example of this contamination, also due to the use it makes of the format Panavision. The 1969 film, directed by the never praised enough Hideo Gosha, despite its linearity, takes the best from the cinematographic cultures of the time and exploits it to stage a melancholy ballad about the warrior’s honor (the so-called bushido) and on what it means to be a samurai, carry a sword and deal with the past, never completely left behind.
In years when political discourse was much less risky to stage, Gosha partially put aside the praise of the violence of his cinema to dedicate himself to internal drama, searching for reconciliation and peace, hindered by a rotten system who, interested almost exclusively in finances, is losing every shred of humanity. A torment that intertwines stories and involves multiple social actors, all held up by precarious balances ready to be fatally torn apart.
However, a clear dichotomy between good and evil does not emerge from this (even if It is the shogunate’s reputation that emerges with broken bones, guilty of remaining indifferent and watching from a distance), the investigation slowly unfolds through the gray areas of morality, because to survive in a hostile context like this perhaps you need to adapt and bend. But the general sense of desperation does not affect the action scenes, some of which are alternated with highly studied and evocative moments of strategic stasis, shot with rigorous scenic care which above all enhances the spaces and the position of the bodies within them .
Why don’t you play in hell?
At first glance you can say anything except that this is a samurai film. But between the comedy, the frenzy of coming of age and the yakuza (there really is everything!) Why don’t you play in hell? it can be called, albeit with a little effort, a samurai film, certainly unconventional but very contemporary. The cinema of its author, that Sion Sono which has had very little distribution in Italy, is anything but classifiable (and this helps to catalog his works, which can be associated with one or another genre), never tamed and with a sui generis personality. Traits all present in the 2013 film, in which he reaches some of the peaks of his cinema (whose highest point is, probably, always Love Exposure) and reflects on the practice of making films itself. Making samurai movies, among other things.
Sono has a textbook command of characters and stories and imagery, able to hold all this density together and make it work with precision, even when it seems like nothing is under control and that the reins have been released. His cinema is like a great caricature which, however, as in this case, does not forget the Japanese artistic tradition and pays homage to the samurai not with the tones of nostalgia but with a postmodern and fresh approach. And the final battle-duel is the perfect example of how to honor the chanbara with the same ideas as him.
Extraordinary, Why don’t you play in hell? it exaggerates not only the art of its author but even the stylistic features of the samurai: those described by the director are not warriors with honor and dignity but not too smart yakuza, who dress like their ancient counterparts but of whom they seem more like a parody. It will not be a samurai film, as traditionally understood, but more of a lucid madness that plays and has fun with the samurai. And at least once, as long as it doesn’t always offer the same titles, it might be fine like this.
Killing
A film like this, in this way, few directors other than Shinya Tsukamoto can think of. Starting from the original title, Zan, which can be translated as “cut”: at the center there is the means with which to defend oneself, to show off skills but also to wound, to kill. Here it is represented by the sword/katana which, as often in jidaigekiAnd not only at the center of a real cult but also becomes an extension of the body and spirit. From the beginning, Tsukamoto always shows such extensions (the sword or, in that case, the machine) as the evil to try to reject; an evil which however cannot always be kept away and which in the past as in the contemporary era, leads to a deformation of the spirit and dehumanisation.
His second chapter of the trilogy on violence and war (started with Fires on the plain and recently concluded with Shadow of Fireamong the films of 2023 not yet released in Italy) investigates the facets of the human soul, the thin border between lucidity and madness, in an era of transition – the end of the Edo Period and the beginning of the Modern Age, in the second half of the 19th century, corresponds to the advent of the Meiji Era, with all the changes, especially moral and social, that it brings – unstable and neurotic like filmmaker’s style.
An eye-camera, often by hand, tormented even in the apparent quiet, one expressive poetics that enhances the nervous crisis of the gaze and the psyche, even when, as in this work, the style becomes, at least compared to the past, more rarefied. Tsukamoto tears up perspectives on Japan’s past, always permeated by obsequious respect, and invests them with his peculiar, still punk grit. An internal conflict, the one relating to killing, which is a reflection of the errors of a world that wants us to be merciless, fratricidal machines (a non-random term), to be contrasted with a humanity that is difficult to keep alive.
