A jazz bandleader, falsely accused of murdering his girlfriend, tries to stay one step ahead of the police as he dives into Tokyo’s sin-city in search of the real killer in this dark and beautiful noir from master Seijun Suzuki.

	
Ankoku.no.ryoken.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 27 min
Size: 	5.92 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x800 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	9 467 kb/s
BPP: 	0.257
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/CF576D17E01181B/Ankoku.no.ryoken.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/E169A1506FE1612/Ankoku.no.ryoken.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR_ENGohakosubs.ass
https://nitro.download/view/B85BEEEA91E00DA/Ankoku.no.ryoken.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR_ENGohakosubs.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Ankoku no ryoken AKA Passport to Darkness (1959) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron’s deceased wife.

Ian Johnston, Not Coming to a Theater Near You wrote:
Zigeunerweisen, the first film in Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho trilogy, proved something of a surprise success in Japan, both commercially (this was very definitely unplanned) and critically—it took the Japanese Academy Awards for best picture, director, and supporting actress, and the prestigious Kinema Jumpo awards for best director, film, screenplay, actress, and supporting actress. So, Suzuki teamed up again with producer Genjiro Arato to double the budget for the follow-up Kagero-za.

Again, the setting is the 1920s Japan of the Taisho area, and again a literary work is the source for the screenplay. In this case, the basis is a short story by Kyoka Izumi, a writer most famous now for his idiosyncratic Gothic-flavoured ghost stories, published in the main in the early years of the twentieth century. From this has been fashioned a screenplay which rather resists any attempt at a synopsis—or is it Suzuki’s treatment that deliberately muddies the waters of character and narrative consistency?

The protagonist is playwright Matsuzaki, who one day encounters a mysterious woman, Shinako, on her way to a hospital. This appears to be the (late?) wife of his wealthy patron Tamawaki, and Matsuzaki becomes obsessed with Shinako, pursuing her out of Tokyo into rural Kanazawa, where he is drawn into a love-suicide pact encouraged if not orchestrated by the shotgun-toting Tamawaki. The story is further complicated by the way Matsuzaki’s obsession shifts between Shinako and the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Ine, apparently Tamawaki’s first (also deceased?) wife, and the story reaches its climax — if no great clarification — via a bizarre ceremony whereby dolls are draped in white cloths and hidden sexual organs are viewed and then via a lengthy sequence in a kabuki theatre where performers and audience are all children.

Even this synopsis makes the narrative connections clearer than they actually are. Shinako remains unnamed for almost the first half of the film, as is her identity as Tamawaki’s wife, if Tamawaki’s wife and the “bladder cherry lady” are the same—as they seem to be, except that Matsuzaki tells Tamawaki that Shinako reminds him of a beautiful lady he met long ago: is this the lady from the encounter at the beginning of the film?

So, the details of the story and the precise status of the characters are consistently unclear (as Matsusaki himself is when narrating parts of the story to Tamawaki), which is the point of a film deliberately aiming to replicate a dream-state. This feeling is established right from the start with the film’s second shot (Matsuzaki’s meeting with Shinako), where Shinako is presented frontally, still and facing the audience, standing in the centre of a flight of stone steps. There’s an unreal quality accentuated by the contrast between her pale skin, her light-coloured clothing and the basket of white flowers she is carrying as opposed to the dark greens of the surroundings and Matsuzaki’s dark clothes; and the contrast between her stillness and Matsuzaki’s constant movement. (Although the case on Kino’s DVD claims a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, as with Zigeunerweisen it’s actually full frame, which judging from the composition of this shot, as with the film generally, seems right.)

This is the scene where Shinako asks Matsuzaki to accompany her to the hospital, out of fear of a bladder cherry (whatever they may be!) vendor on the way there. Matsuzaki refuses; but the next sequence shows Matsuzaki at the hospital in conversation with her. We assume he has come looking for her, but in keeping with Suzuki’s general approach neither the connections between sequences nor a character’s motivation are made clear. Furthermore, the construction of the sequence, that is, the matching of one shot to the next, is equally oblique. Consider this series:

A low-angle shot of Matsuzaki searching, interrupted by a strange squelching sound.

A medium-shot from the rear of Shinako turning slightly and sitting down.

A long-shot, a 180°-match on the previous shot, of Shinako facing us in middle distance (the centre of the frame) with Matzusaki looking on from the right.

A medium close-up of Shinako, shot from the side but not from Matsuzaki’s point-of-view.

And so on.

The sum effect is quite disconcerting. Spatial relationships seem awry, or disturbed by such devices as cutting within a conversation from, say, a medium shot to an extreme long shot, both filmed from the same angle. Figures will be placed at the edge of the frame to emphasise the sense of being off-centre, or arrayed flatly in a formal and unrealistic line across the frame. All in all, there’s a fascinating willful aestheticism at play here, but one which works to underpin the dream logic of Kagero-za’s narrative. There are frequent unexplained abrupt shifts from one scene to the next; for example, we see Matzusaki in the alley outside the inn stop, the lighting suddenly brightens unnaturally, and he turns in a circle to the sound of festival drums, at which point there is sudden cut to him standing in a country road with the anarchist, who in fact taps him as if to wake him from one dream state to the next. Or alternatively, a scene never develops, but is simply replaced by a new one.

One brief moment sums up the spirit of the whole film: Tamawaki leaves the kabuki theatre, stands in the alley facing us, his shotgun over one shoulder, and states, “Who talks of realism here?” while laughing gleefully. The bizarre juxtapositions, the lack of narrative consistency, the startling visual tropes are all both the strength and the weakness of Kagero-za. It’s invigorating to allow oneself to be seduced by the flow of images, to give up trying to make logical, intellectual sense of things. But the process ends up being so long drawn-out and frustrating of any true emotional/intellectual investment in the film, that when we finally learn of Tamawaki and Shinako’s double suicide, we’re pretty much unmoved. Matsuzaki may end the film with his declaration that “since I saw my lover in a dream, I have depended on dreams”, but our feeling is more likely to be that in Kagero-za Suzuki himself has depended too much on them.

Kagero-za (1981) BDRIP 4K Restoration 1080p x264 FLAC KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 19 min
Size: 	15.7 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1480x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	1.370
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	15.0 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.391
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch FLAC @ 1 043 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/58C1DEB357498BB/Kagero-za_(1981)_BDRIP_4K_Restoration_1080p_x264_FLAC_KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Kagero-za AKA Heat-Haze Theatre (1981) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A nightclub manager is in love with his pianist. However, she has a ranger boyfriend who’s been permanently stationed in the mountain wilderness. Their only communication is by letter. As time passes the correspondence slows to a trickle. Then nothing. The manager persuades the girl to visit the boy. She does, but she’s totally unprepared for her bizarre discovery.

Rabu retâ AKA Love Letter.1959.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	39 min 31 s
Size: 	898 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x428 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.285
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AAC LC @ 176 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/79F0AAE4D35345C/Rabu_reta_AKA_Love_Letter.1959.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Rabu retâ AKA Love Letter (1959) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Amechiyo is being hunted by his father for being too beautiful and as he tries to escape he runs into Princess Raccoon, a raccoon in human form. They fall for each other, but humans and raccoons shouldn’t mix so the raccoon court causes some trouble. She saves his life, then he saves hers by finding the Frog of Paradise on the Sacred Mountain and so forth, until the tragic finale.

	
Princess Raccoon.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 50 min
Size: 	1.54 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	718x478 ~> 849x478
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 800 kb/s
BPP: 	0.219
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 5.1ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/01B2B80BD1B96FB/Princess_Raccoon.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

Many thanks to @Evan for this copy

The post Seijun Suzuki – Operetta tanuki goten AKA Princess Raccoon (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A rookie golfer must cope with the stress of fame after a marketing executive transforms her into a sports celebrity.

Quote:
Nearly a decade after being fired by Nikkatsu Studios, Suzuki returned to the director’s chair with this titillating tale of a model who is groomed to become a professional golfer as a publicity stunt. When she turns out to be good at the sport, her success leads a deranged fan to hatch a blackmail scheme. “Riddled with the director’s wildly non-conformist use of non-contiguous edits, unhinged shot composition, and violent splashes of colour, crazed and chaotic and for too long buried in the sand bunkers of obscurity, this long-overlooked work simply cries out for revival” (Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye).

A.Tale.of.Sorrow.and.Sadness.1977.1080p.BluRay.FLAC2.0.x264-PTer.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 33 min
Size: 	14.2 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x818 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	21.5 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.570
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch FLAC @ 303 kb/s (Japanese(Dual Mono))
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 78.2 kb/s (Commentary by critic and author Samm Deighan (2025))

https://nitro.download/view/DDE1A5515DA979F/A.Tale.of.Sorrow.and.Sadness.1977.1080p.BluRay.FLAC2.0.x264-PTer.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, Chinese

The post Seijun Suzuki – Hishu monogatari AKA A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A female golfer who has exceeded expectations to reach the top not only has to contend with being in-demand, but also with the men in her life, her neigbours, her brother and not to mention a stalker.

A.Tale.of.Sorrow.and.Sadness.1977.BDRIP.576p.x264.AAC.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 33 min
Size: 	2.49 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x436 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 500 kb/s
BPP: 	0.327
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AAC LC @ 160 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 159 kb/s (Commentary with Samm Deighan)

https://nitro.download/view/00E7916FDEA866D/A.Tale.of.Sorrow.and.Sadness.1977.BDRIP.576p.x264.AAC.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese, English
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Hishu monogatari AKA A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The moment he’s released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto’s precious stones.

Ankokugai.no.bijo.1958.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 27 min
Size: 	2.43 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x426 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 754 kb/s
BPP: 	0.359
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/448F1ED476AAC03/Ankokugai.no.bijo.1958.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Ankokugai no bijo AKA Underworld Beauty (1958) first appeared on Cinema of the World.