Le kimono pourpre

For a long while, this seemed like it was going to be one of Sam Fuller's best movies. The direction is great and the story and characters interesting. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down by a silly love triangle plot and starts to fall apart a bit. It is interesting that the romance in question is an interracial one - it was actually the selling point of the movie if you look at the poster! - but it never really works. The film follows two detectives in L.A., Glenn Corbett and James Shigeta, who are investigating the case of a slain stripper. One of their leads is a painting of the girl in a crimson kimono, done by an artist named Chris. They quickly discover that Chris is actually a woman (Victoria Shaw), and she helps them with their case. Corbett immediately takes a liking to her, and she returns his affection at first. But after an afternoon spent hanging out with Shigeta, she's in love with him. This is quite daring, but then the film starts to focus on nothing but the romantic entanglement for the last third of the film. About five minutes before the end, it feels like Fuller snaps out of it and says, "Crap, we forgot about the plot!" and throws together a reasonably satisfying finale. It's definitely a good film, though, when all is said and done.

Sam Fuller's distinctive movies rarely live up to their opening shots (the bald hooker beating the stuffing out of the pimp who shaved her head in The Naked Kiss being the most unforgettable example). In The Crimson Kimono, a stripper (Sugar Torch!) is chased from the burlesque house's dressing room out into one of Los Angeles' main drags where she is shot dead. It's up to a couple of cops who share an apartment -- Glenn Corbett and James Shigeta -- to find her killer. What makes the movie both appealing and problematic is that Fuller demotes the thriller material to second-billing, while he develops a provocative rhapsody on a white-Asian love-vs.-friendship triangle centering on the buddies' both falling in love with the same witness (Victoria Shaw). Anna Lee and Jaclynne Green fill out the cast as the kind of characters who tend to show up only in Fuller's universe. As with all his movies, The Crimson Kimono has its startling moments, but it's one of the few that presents a complex and, for its day, progressive view of racial stereotypes and tensions in late-Eisenhower-era America.

I was truly surprised by this movie - I expected a basic potboiler, with a random collection of Japanese and/or Chinese stereotypes... but what I got was a potboiler (sorry, the plot's pretty basic) AND an interesting set of insights into Japanese-American culture. I'm trying to picture a 1959 audience attending this movie... were they expecting an Oriental thriller? Or perhaps a pseudo-noir detective movie? (I'm also trying to resist comparing this to the last half-dozen episodes of Law & Order I've seen)

Meanwhile, this movie has no sense of "outsider's look at foreigners," no sense of "those people are strange," just a lot of "here's what they do, and here's what their daily life includes." All wrapped up in... a B-grade movie. But that just means that the cultural pieces lift up the otherwise-average quality of the rest of the movie!

If you can, and it would definitely be as rare a chance as I had recently, try and see Samuel Fuller's The Crimson Kimono on the big screen, preferably with a packed audience. True, some of the dialog and mannerisms of the characters end up forty-seven years later coming off as being too funny for its own good. But then again, Fuller's style here, as in the films that would follow in the 60's (and linked of course to his 50's work), is that of sensationalism yet not in a way that feels too dishonest. It's got a sharp cast of professionals, with Glenn Corbett and James Shigetta as the leads playing Detective partners who are investigating a case that somehow leads to a sort of love triangle with a witness Victoria Shaw. And Fuller is able to make the film quite entertaining with at least a few memorable moments almost in spite of the low-budget of things.

The opening sequence is, naturally for Fuller, part of the excitement and close-to-exploitation B-movie-ness of it all, as a stripper gets gunned down running away from her dressing room. Even before this we get the opening titles popping out at the screen, almost being too obvious. But to say that the film is at times leaning towards tongue-in-cheek is more of an observation than a criticism. It fits the style that some of the dialog bits are really sharp and, indeed, well-written, and that as such the actors take it not too seriously as to make it heavy-handed but not too over the top to have the audience lose interest. Indeed, one of the more interesting scenes is when Shaw and Shigeta get to talking while Corbett is out doing work, as they become connected in a way that is different than how earlier Shaw and Corbett flirted around in a cool though 'movie' kind of way.

All through this Fuller pumps up the melodrama with well-shot action (the big Korean guy getting tackled down by the detectives was maybe my favorite scene on a shamelessly enjoyable level) and enough of a kind of mix of psychology and sociology in this cross section of Japan and America. And it's interesting how he slightly improves in flipping the situation from House of Bamboo where the Japanese atmosphere wasn't as convincing. It's probably a tough find for most, and of course even rarer to get on the big-screen depending on where you're at, but it might be one of Fuller's better 'quickie' kind of movies where its 80 minute running time does just enough to make it very worthwhile in not overstaying its welcome. It's funny, thoughtful, and assured film-noir.

What a film! A tender-hearted love story from Sam Fuller. It may look like a detective movie but it's just a cover to disguise a really well told and well acted tale about two cops who love the same woman. You'll see very real characters who feel real emotions - "Honest, dirty, jealousy," to paraphrase.

Wonderful use of JAPANtown, in downtown Los Angeles, and a good L.A. movie in general. Make note of this real interracial relationship movie from 1959. You gotta see it.