How unhinged does a film have to be to get a director fired? Or, more to the point, how unhinged does it have to be to get a seasoned gonzo cyclone like Suzuki Seijun fired? After more than 10 years of cranking out perverse pulp bonanzas for Nikkatsu studio, Suzuki ran afoul of producers in 1967 with Branded to Kill, a cubist fusillade that swiftly got the filmmaker sacked on charges of “incoherence.”
Of course, accusing the auteur behind Tattooed Life and Fighting Elegy of being incoherent is akin to accusing the Pacific Ocean of being wet, and yet it’s easy to see what about the film’s jumbled spirit so infuriated the studio heads: While most of his earlier underworld sagas subversively stretched the skin of boilerplate yakuza thrillers this way and that while still functioning as commercial genre offerings, Branded to Kill is confrontational in its disdain for stylistic...
Of course, accusing the auteur behind Tattooed Life and Fighting Elegy of being incoherent is akin to accusing the Pacific Ocean of being wet, and yet it’s easy to see what about the film’s jumbled spirit so infuriated the studio heads: While most of his earlier underworld sagas subversively stretched the skin of boilerplate yakuza thrillers this way and that while still functioning as commercial genre offerings, Branded to Kill is confrontational in its disdain for stylistic...
- 5/11/2023
- by Fernando F. Croce
- Slant Magazine
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