Japan action
1966
bw 121 min.
Director: Kihachi Okamoto
CLV: $69.95 - available
2 discs, catalog # CC1446L
VHS: available from Home Vision Cinema
If Akira Kurosawa is the John Ford of Japanese samurai dramas, then Sword of Doom director Kihachi Okamoto is the
samurai film's Sam Fuller.
A specialist in action films, with a particulat accent on violence and raw characterizations, Okomoto made his name
in the late 1960's with Samurai Assassin (1965), Kill (1968), and Zato Ichi Meets Yojimbo (1970).
These movies, and The Sword of Doom, all starred a featured Toshiro Mifune, who had appeared frequently in the films
of Akira Kurosawa. But like Sam Fuller, Okamoto (who spent three years in a uniform during the Pacific War) specialized in
blood-and-guts World War II battle films.
The Sword of Doom is considered Okamoto's masterpiece, but when it opened here in 1967, it had the effect of
separating the sheep from the goats. Perhaps western critics expected a more lyrical drama in the manner of Kurosawa,
or a thoughtfull examination of bushido (samurai chivalric code.). They were agast at Sword's ballet of
violence in two bravura and gory martial arts pieces that climax in the film's first and second thirds (neatly dividing it
into "acts"), not to mention the finale, one of the most violent in cinema history.
The plot at first look was simpler than those of most Japanese films that have been received as classics (
The Seven Samurai, The 47 Ronin, Samurai Rebellion, etc.). Set in the 1860s, it's the story of Ryunosuke Tsukue, a samurai
who is hated for his savagery and disregarded for the law. Ryunosuke is an outcast, surviving as a hired assassin of
political figures. He also lives in fear of the revenge set in motion by his late father and the brother of his first
samurai victim, as well as the enemy of Toranosuke Shimada (Toshiro Mifune), the only samurai who might best him as a
swordsman.
If this seems superficial, it's supposed to be--Okamoto is less interested in philosophy than in entertainment. And as
to narrative, Okamoto looks to the Western for his characterizations. The portrayal of madness embodied in Ryunosuke Tsukue
(Tatsuya Nakadai, another Kurosawa alumnus from Yojimbo and Sanjuro) evokes, to this writer, the
Stephen McNally or Don Duryea characters in Anthony Mann's Winchester '73, men who kill for the pleasure of it.
The Sword of Doom took years to achieve critical acceptance, but audience members not wedded to scholarly pretensions
immediately seized upon the vitality of Okamoto's direction and Nakadai's performance. His Ryunosuke ("a man from hell," as one
character puts it) is one of the screen's more memorable psychopaths, a passive-aggressive whose bloodlust is portrayed with dead
calm, revealed by the tiniest motion of an eye, the trace of a smile, or the tense position of his body as he poders killing.
For lack of a full-fledged opponent to Ryunosuke, Okamoto establishes Shimada as Ryunosuke's moral opposite, a thoughtful, introspective
samurai--the film's conscience. He tells Ryunosuke, "The sword is the soul. Study the soul to study the sword," after regretfully
dispatching two dozen samurai for an assassination attempt. In a flurry of savage action (including several hands and blood splattering
on newly fallen snow) every single samurai falls by the wayside. As Ryunosuke watches Shimada in action against his cohorts, the
barest flicker of an expression indicates that he has been shaken by this sight. One has the chilling sense of a man who has seen the
means of his own demise.
Okamoto and cinematographer Hiroshi Murai (Samurai Assassin, The Emperor and the General, The Submergence of Japan, a.k.a. Tidal Wave)
make splendid use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The close-ups are never artificially imposing, and the action scenes, almost all involving
dozens of combatants, are dazzling in their complexity and scope. The finale, one of the longest, bloodiest samurai duels in history, makes
incredibly evocative use of shadow and space. Impressive, also, are the little details, such as the samurai practicing with his sword, his
blade interposed against shafts of sunlight that seem almost solid.
The Sword of Doom doesn't pretend to be anything more than a study of madness and violence at the extreme edges. It is the finest movie from
a filmmaker who deserves to be more widely known in America.
-Bruce Eder
(Bruce Eder is a film historian and frequent contributor to Criterion commentary tracks.)
Index of Films
Buy CLV |
View Items |
Checkout
Ordering Information |
Criterion |
Home Vision
|
|
|
