On Tuesday at 7 PM Doc Films kicks off a nine-week, 13-film series devoted to Japanese director Seijun Suzuki (who passed away last year at 93) with Tokyo Drifter (1966). It’s the only film in the series with any sort of reputation in the west—the other 12 rarely screen outside of Japan. As programmer Will Carroll explains in his notes for the series, the Suzuki films that have been distributed in the west represent only a fraction of his work, which consists of more than 60 theatrical and television films. The titles that are widely available here tend to be action movies—along with Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill (1967) and Pistol Opera (2001) are the most popular—yet, as this series shows, Suzuki also made melodramas, coming-of-age stories, and social satires.
By the mid-60s, Suzuki became something of a cause among Japanese critics and programmers, who regarded him as a major artist in spite of his reputation as a contract-bound genre director. The series at Doc will show two movies from this period, the 1964 crime drama The Flowers and the Angry Waves (screening February 20 at 7 PM) and the 1965 Yakuza comedy Born Under Crossed Stars (screening February 27 at 7 PM). Emboldened by his growing reputation, Suzuki continued to push the boundaries of film form, much to the chagrin of his employers at Nikkatsu. Studio bosses chastised Suzuki for his supposedly confusing and off-putting films; after he made Branded to Kill, they ended his contract immediately. Suzuki’s dismissal inspired protests across Japan, though he didn’t get his job back. He continued to find work, mostly in television, and would direct roughly another dozen films over the next four decades.
