April 8, 2016 – April 29, 2016
In a career spanning nearly five decades, Seijun Suzuki amassed a body of work ranging from B-movie potboilers to beguiling metaphysical mysteries. An extremely inventive filmmaker, Suzuki utilized a wide range of film stocks, angles, jump cuts, impressionistic sets, driving jazz soundtracks, and unhinged actors pushed to their limits—and was thus at the vanguard of a new, radical Japanese cinema which flowered in the late 1950s and 1960s, one which continues to hold sway with a new generation of filmmakers who continue to push the boundaries of the medium. “To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.”—Manohla Dargis.
Program notes by Tom Vick, Curator of Film at the Smithsonian’s Freer | Sackler Museums of Asian Art and author of Time and Space are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki (2015).
Action, Anarchy, and Audacity is co-organized and co-presented by the Japan Foundation.
Branded to Kill
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
This fractured film noir is the final provocation that got Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, simultaneously making him a counterculture …
Carmen from Kawachi
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
A 1960s riff on the opera Carmen (including a rock version of its famous aria “Habanero”), this picaresque tale sends …
Gate of Flesh
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Part social realist drama, part sadomasochistic trash opera, Gate of Flesh paints a dog-eat-dog portrait of postwar Tokyo. The film …
Kagero-za
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
According to film critic Tony Rayns, Kagero-za “may well be Suzuki’s finest achievement outside the constraints of genre filmmaking.” In …
Kanto Wanderer
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Based on a book by Taiko Hirabayashi, one of Japan’s most famous female novelists, Kanto Wanderer puts a Suzukian spin …
Passport to Darkness
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
In this stylish film noir, a trombonist goes on an all-night bender after his wife disappears during their honeymoon. When …
Smashing the O-Line
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
This crime thriller features one of the most nihilist characters in Suzuki’s early films: Katiri, a reporter so ambitiously amoral …
Tattooed Life
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Set in the 1930s, Tattooed Life is the story of two brothers: Kenji, an art student, and Tetsu, who is …
The Call of Blood
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Though Suzuki created it in the midst of his stylistic breakthrough, The Call of Blood has never received the same …
The Sleeping Beast Within
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
A businessman vanishes upon his return from an overseas trip, and his daughter hires a reporter to help find him. …
Tokyo Drifter
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Tasked with making a vehicle for actor/singer Tetsuya Watari to croon the title song, Suzuki concocted this crazy yarn about …
Youth of the Beast
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Suzuki himself claims that 1963 was the year when he truly came into his own, and Youth of the Beast …
Yumeji
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Made ten years after its predecessor, the final film in the Taisho Trilogy spins a fantastical tale from the life …
Zigeunerweisen
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Named the best film of the 1980s in a poll of Japanese film critics, Zigeunerweisen takes its title from a …