The Japanese cinema of the 1970s was unique for the way in which it responded to the challenge posed by sex cinema. Whereas elsewhere the worlds of porn and mainstream cinema remained largely separate, insofar as dreams of the former of crossing over into the latter remained exactly that, Japan witnessed the extraordinary phenomenon of the Pinku or Pink Film, as epitomised by the likes of Norifumu Suzuki's Star of David / Beautiful Girl Hunter .
The plot is simple: A young man, Tatsuya, grows up in a wealthy and privileged family without being told by his doting parents that he is the product of his mother's rape by a criminal lowlife who invaded the family home one night. Now, twenty or so years on, this legacy asserts itself as the recently-orphaned Tatsuya, now a university student fascinated with an unhealthy quasi-Nietzscheanism, transforms the basement of his mansion house into a torture dungeon and begins to populate it with young women, some of whom turn from initial reactions of revulsion and horror to enthusiastic participants…
Put thus, there's maybe not that much to differentiate Star of David from, say, Forced Entry , a notorious American porno film wherein a deranged Vietnam war veteran, played by Deep Throat 's Harry Reems, behaves much like a combination of Tatsuya and his father.
But whereas US porn always remained separate and unequal as far as both production and distribution were concerned, one of the major Japanese studios, Nikkatsu, had actually turned its entire business over to the production of Pinku; a fact that also appears to explain the presence of iconic yakuza film star Bunta Sugawara in a cameo role here – the closest Hollywood analogue probably being something like Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty actually agreeing to appear in a Deep Throat II rather than just fellow-travelling with the porno-chic boom of the early to mid-1970s.
The real difference, however is that Star of David is a well made, beautiful looking film that showcases the work of an artist who actually believed in what he was doing, rather than a someone who just wanted to get the film in the can and the money in the bank. To put it another way, when you watch Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones , you feel from the latter, with its explorations of Catholic guilt, that there was a distinctive sensibility at work there – albeit one always severely constrained by the unfavourable circumstances in which he was working – whereas with Star of David and Sex and Fury or School of the Holy Beast , there is the sense of the same artist and personality at work throughout, honing his skills and developing his ideas with each film.
Technique wise, Suzuki places a constant emphasis upon drawing the viewer's attention to the fact that he is watching a film, whether in the use of non-naturalistic colour to express mood or of montage rather than continuity editing; it comes at little surprise to learn that Star of David was inspired by a manga.
Thematically, his broad concern is the collision between Japan and the West since the Meiji restoration in 1868, with a particular attention being paid to the position of the Judeo-Christian religions in a Japanese context and to the lasting legacy of the Second World War and its holocausts.
The cynic could, of course, point out that a concern with post-1868 history is nothing unusual – there is, after all, a whole genre of gendai geki, or "modern dramas" that are dated from Meiji onwards, while the dai kaiju eiga or "giant monster film" has often been cited as indicative of a national obsession with the destructive legacy of the war and the nuclear bomb in particular.
What cannot be explained in these terms, however, nor refuted, is the recurrence of other distinctive and idiosyncratic tropes, like that of a picture in a locket.
If there's one area where Star of David doesn't go as far as it could – and, in terms of critique, you feel should – is it failure, as per the generic and censorship rules, to explicitly show genitalia and penetration in the manner of Nagasi Oshima's otherwise similar cause celebre, Ai No Corrida .
But, given that the topic of the Nazi Nacht und Nebel – Night and Fog – as raised by one of Tatsuya's professors here was also picked up on by Oshima in his Night and Fog in Japan , the difference between the two artists are perhaps less those of intent and intelligence as their respective locations in the national and international cinematic landscape: whereas the ease with which Oshima could be labelled “the Japanese Godard” quickly brought him international recognition and all that entailed in terms of the co-production support for independent iconoclasm – as exemplified by the development of footage from Ai No Corrida in France to get round Japanese obscenity legistlation, if memory serves correct – the quieter, less demonstrative way in which Suzuki worked within – but arguably equally against – the confines of Japanese studio system appears to have meant that the radicalism of his cinema, like that of his namesake Seijun, seems to have meant that his cinema went largely unnoticed by critics, all the more when those seeking to go beyond Oshima could handily have Koji Wakamatsu pointed out to them as a neat example of independent, avant-gardism. Or, well, independent but for the sponsorship/endorsement given him by Oshima – which, like much charity could be argued cynically to be as much for the benefit of the giver as the receiver.
But before this turns into a rant I'd better point out that I like all of these filmmakers and what they were trying to do, with my criticism more one of the arcane mechanisms by which some find an audience through critical championing and others, equally worthy, have to wait.
With the recognition now given Seijun Suzuki and the likes of Yasuzo Masumura, hopefully Norifumu Suzuki's time is near…
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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