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Probably Shinoda’s most accessible film for uninitiated viewers, this enthralling thriller concerns a yakuza (Ikebe Ryo) who, on his release from prison after serving time for murder, returns to his old gang and is drawn into another dangerous assignment. Admirers of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai will find themselves at home with Shinoda’s radicalization of film noir through style and behavior. Veteran matinee idol Ikebe delivers a career-redefining performance; he is ideally matched with Kaga Mariko as a young woman seeking excitement in gambling, drugs and fast driving. Violent set pieces are an inevitability, but Shinoda approaches them with reluctance and misdirection, subverting them into blankly murky anticlimaxes. – Chris Fujiwara

Introduction by Peter Grilli
New 35mm print

Directed by Shinoda Masahiro.
With Ikebe Ryo, Kaga Mariko, Miyaguchi Seiji.
Japan, 1964, 35mm, black & white, 96 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

From the Shochiku Collection at the Harvard Film Archive: Sixties Shinoda film series co-presented by the Japan Foundation and co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute