The Graceful Brute – 1962, Yuzo Kawashima

by Allan Fish

(Japan 1962 96m) not on DVD

Aka. Shitoyakana kedamono

Putting the Renoir in the bedroom

p  Osamu Yoneda  d  Yuzo Kawashima  w  Kaneto Shindo  ph  Nobuo Munekawa  ed  Tatsuji Nakashizu  m  Sei Ikeno  art  Atsuhi Shibata

Ayako Wakao (Yukie Mitani), Yunosuke Ito (Tokizo Maeda), Hisano Yamaoka (Yoshino Maeda), Yuko Hamada (Tomoko Maeda), Manamitsu Kawabata (Minoru Maeda), Eiji Funakoshi (Kamiya), Hideo Takamatsu (Katori), Kyu Kazanka (Yoshizawa), Shoichi Ozawa (Pinosaku),

There are fewer films in this selection that can be harder to like, but that in itself is part of what makes Yuzo Kawashima’s black comedy – one of his last films prior to his untimely death – so compelling.  It dares one to look at the underbelly of Japanese society in a way that doesn’t conform to genre.   It’s not a film about prostitutes or yakuza, but everyday people, and if they’re all like the Maedas, it’s a doomed society.

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