Point and Line

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992) was a very prolific Japanese novelist, best known in English for his mystery and detective stories of which "Point And Lines" is one of his best. This film is an excellent transcription of the book, which I read in translation back in the 1970s. At the time I couldn't find any other of his books available in English. In a provincial town on the seacoast south of Tokyo, a young couple is found dead in an embrace on a rocky beach. They have both swallowed poison and died together. It looks like an obvious double suicide but an older detective thinks something is wrong with the place and the method of death. A young hot shot detective (Hiroshi Minami) comes down from Tokyo to help. After looking into the couple's backgrounds he come to suspect that a rich business man, Yasuda (Isao Yamagata), is somehow behind the deaths but at the time the couple died Yasuda was 8 hours away in the opposite direction from Tokyo on the northern island of Hokkaido. The young detective is determined to break the alibi but faces long odds. More than one surprise awaits him. The great character actor and Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura plays the supportive chief of police.