Underworld Beauty
directed by Seijun Suzuki
starring Mari Shiraki, Michitarô Mizushima
Radiance Films
Seijun Suzuki’s breathless 1958 film noir thriller, Underworld Beauty, arrives on Blu-ray from Radiance Films in all of its widescreen monochrome glory. Although best known for his candy pop saturated colors in films like Tokyo Drifter, Suzuki proves equally adept in the inky blacks of the world of film noir.
In a setup familiar to fans of American film noir and Japanese yakuza pictures, Miyamoto (Michitarô Mizushima) returns from serving time in prison with a desire to not only go straight but make restitution to his partner, who was injured and disabled in the heist that he went to prison for. Miyamoto has a small fortune in diamonds he wants to move in order to help his old friend Mihara (Tôru Abe) and Mihara’s sister, Akiko (Mari Shiraki), have a better life. Miyamoto agrees to broker a deal for the diamonds, but when the deal goes south, Mihara winds up dead, and Miyamoto and Akiko must form an uneasy alliance to get the diamonds along with a side of revenge, all set to a theremin-laced jazz score.
Although Miyamoto’s steely gangster trying to do the right thing is a staple of both noir and yakuza film, Akiko, played brilliantly with full body intensity by Mari Shiraki, is an absolute force of nature. She seems to have based much of her performance on Audrey Hepburn’s manic turn in Funny Face (1957). Shiraki, a former dancer, seems determined to use the entire CinemaScope frame for her scenes. In a simple dialogue scene, instead of merely sitting down, she sprawls across her boyfriend’s desk while seductively kicking her legs in the air. She has the ability to capture huge swings in emotion with nothing but her face and body language, and she totally sells it. In contrast to her sexual charms (she works as a nude artist model when she isn’t swing dancing in bars), she speaks with masculine phrasing which doesn’t register immediately to English ears, but in Japan would have made quite the statement of liberation.
Although he would become synonymous with oversaturated color, director Seijun Suzuki proves to be just as masterful in the high contrast black and whites of noir, while also making his first widescreen film. He fills Underworld Beauty with all manner of sexy and macabre imagery, including the mannequin workshop, where the mobbed-up sculptor boyfriend uses Akiko as a model for custom department store mannequins, and the Turkish bathhouse steam room. These become a makeshift torture chamber and a sewer system, right out of Carol Reed’s masterpiece, The Third Man (1949).
The more of Seijun Suzuki’s films that get released in the west, the less sense his ouster from the Nikkatsu studio makes. He was famously let go in 1968 because his films “made no sense and no money” and ended his career for a decade. With his blacklisting coming right on the heels of his two greatest and most influential works in Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill, the world was surely robbed of some amazing cinema as the master was set to enter his next creative phase.
Radiance Films brings Underworld Beauty to the west in a striking Blu-ray with a crisp transfer that has excellent shadow detail. The disc also has some nice extras, including a 40-minute short from Suzuki, Love Letter (1959), and an interview with Japanese film critic Mizuki Kodama, where she goes more in depth about the film and especially the groundbreaking and unique performance of Mari Shiraki. Seijun Suzuki’s Underworld Beauty absolutely delivers the goods, even if we don’t get Akiko in black lingerie brandishing a machine gun, as was promised on the film’s poster art. ◼
