Histoire d'une prostituée

"Sunpu Den" is a film from director Seijun Suzuki is both anti-war and anti-prostitution, as it paints a bleak story of a young woman, Harumi. The story begins with Harumi being dumped by her boyfriend. In reaction, she volunteers to be a 'comfort woman' on the Japanese front lines in China. The comfort women were prostitutes provided by the government for the troops--and this small group of women are to satisfy the sexual needs of a thousand men! To make things worse, the Adjutant in charge is a brutal jerk who mistreats the women. Harumi hates him, though she later falls in love with this man's assistant. What happens next is a tragic waste of life and is an indictment of the Japanese war machine.

This is what you might call a 'feel-bad movie'. It is meant to be sad and awful and it is. The film is compelling viewing but isn't nearly as good as other Japanese anti-war films like "Burmese Harp" or "Fires on the Plain". Very good but not great.

Most likely the closest Suzuki ever got to making a prestige film. It probably wasn't viewed as such at the time, as it was a remake of a movie called Escape at Dawn that was generally considered a classic at the time (it was scripted by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Senkichi Taniguchi in 1950). Story of a Prostitute seemed like a much more lurid version of the older film. Both were anti-war pictures, but Escape at Dawn was romantic and tragic. Story of a Prostitute is harsh and cynical. Its scenes are often comic, which clashes with the standard view of war. In an interview on the new Criterion disc, Suzuki, a veteran himself, says that he found a lot of black humor and absurdity in his wartime experience. All three of WWII-themed films I've seen from him, which cover the pre-war (Fighting Elegy), the actual war (Story of a Prostitute), and post-war (Gate of Flesh) periods all incorporate some level of absurd, black comedy. The three films actually make a good trilogy (the rest I've seen are all yakuza or crime films). Story of a Prostitute is a very powerful anti-war film, though it is lurid and not nearly as powerful as something like, say, Kobayashi's The Human Condition. Yumiko Nogawa, who also starred in Gate of Flesh, gives a fantastic performance. But it is, as usual, Suzuki's supreme visual skills – in black and white in this instance – that make the film a stunning and memorable experience. His artistic imagination in cinematographic matters is nearly unsurpassed in the entire realm of cinema.

Based on a novel written by Tamura Taijiro, and is actually a remake of 1950 Toho film Escape at Dawn directed by Taniguchi Senkichi with stars Ikebe Ryo and Shirley Yamaguchi, director Suzuki Seijun transformed a Nikkatsu ready-made routine script with low budget and tight schedule into one of his finest arts. Without digressing from the script or the novel, he recreated his signature world that is abstractive and ideological. Even though this is a B-movie, or maybe because it is, Suzuki with the production designer Kimura Takeo displays fantastic backdrops using some painstaking techniques of visual effects, superb studio sets and location filming behind outstanding performances acted by Kawaji Tamio, Nogawa Yumiko and Tamagawa Isawo. Compare to the Escape that has altered some elements from the Tamura's original this Suzuki version is essentially true to it, therefore Suzuki version has quite important elements such as the prostitution in the Army, multiple stratum of knotty personae and complicated layers of grotesque psychological characterizations concomitant to their bizarre relationships all of that are omitted in the Taniguchi's "fine literary effort." Along with his sense of unique humor these deep feelings the film radiates might be inspired from his own war experiences as a soldier during the WW II and it could be said that, in this regard, some similarity might be in Samuel Fuller's, many of these films are also deeply affected by Fuller's own war experiences.

"Why did they only bring back the machine gun, leaving him there?" "Because the machine gun is the Emperor's property."

What starts as a "story of a prostitute," one steeped in troubling historical revisionism and bits of fantasy, eventually transforms into a critique of the Japanese army's code of honor during WWII, a brilliant little Trojan horse of a maneuver from Seijun Suzuki. He also shows a real flair with quick editing and simple video effects, the sound design is haunting and practically channels the collective national guilt from these years, and Yumiko Nogawa delivers an absolute powerhouse of a performance. She plays a prostitute at an army camp out on the barren landscape in China, one who a high-ranking Adjutant takes a liking to in his brutal way, and who in turn falls for his aide.

The depiction of the use of "comfort women" by the Japanese army is far from enlightened, which is off-putting to say the least early on. The elephant in the room of course is that here they are almost all Japanese and present voluntarily, not women across other Asian countries forced into sexual slavery, as hundreds of thousands were. We see one prostitute who we can infer is Chinese, but her only hardship is that she's usually paid less than the others. I was on edge and all set to rip this film to shreds because of this (and could certainly understand why someone else might still go ahead and do that), despite it being a very touchy subject to this day in Japan, much less in 1965, probably making it hard to do more as a filmmaker.

Don't expect realism in how the prostitution itself is depicted either. Early on we hear soldiers yukking it up over 13 prostitutes serving the sexual needs of an entire battalion, and know it's going to be a bumpy ride. The prostitutes are all looking to get married, with the main character saying "I want to meet many different men." The Adjutant, despite being a complete brute, is apparently good in bed, as we see her look of rapture mixed with guilt as he goes down on her, and another prostitute testifies to his sexual prowess. Talk about male fantasy. Meanwhile when she gets round to seducing the aide, her eyes are full of adoration after their first time together, which is a contrasting fantasy, to make a woman's heart feel so strongly.

Despite all that, where the film then goes with the story is a critique of militarism and the rigid honor code of the day. It highlights the ridiculous unfairness of the soldier's code of conduct that expected death before capture, and barring that, suicide, and barring that, a court-martial and execution (if they escape, that is). It's a fantastic moment when a few soldiers refuse to shoot another in this predicament, amidst the outset of an enemy attack and the swirling winds. The inversion in the observation from one of the prostitutes that "Living is difficult, dying is cowardly" is too. Through the intellectual character Uno, a guy who just wants to read his philosophy books, the film also criticizes both the invasion of "vast" China to begin with, as well as a country that would prohibit its citizens from freedom of thought ("To the country that doesn't allow an Ideal, farewell").

Suzuki isn't overly showy with his effects, but this film has quite a lot of style, something I liked about it. We see moments of character's imagining things, like when the main character fantasizes someone walking in on her and the aide and having his body fracture apart like a torn photograph. He gives us slow motion effects to intensify feeling, and that fantastic dash out onto the battlefield that leads to moments where all the sound stops.

If for nothing else though, watch this for Nogawa's passionate performance. It's crazy to think she doesn't have a deeper filmography after seeing this. She shows incredible range, with her fierce eyes expressing such defiance in that scene where she vows "You watch. I'll make your power go to shreds." The look of vulnerability she gives over her shoulder in front of a mirror after the Adjutant has followed informing her of devastating news with a demand that she bring him sake is also brilliant, and there are many others.

Probably a controversial film, but I ended up liking it.

Sunpu Den is a remake of AKATSUKI NO DASSO wrote by Kurosawa in 1950, then Seijun Suzuki approaches it more deeply than a dramatic romance that was his forerunner, whereby didn't show the sexual relationship at army's bro.thel, so Sunpu Den is too much daring for its period of time, by this the movie was hard beaten by the critics at release time, regarded as a cheap sexploitation, also Suzuki imposes a slight nihilism narrative to counteract the ruthlessness of the war, the plot is underpinned in the legendary Japanese inexorable honor code where no soldier shouln't go back alive if caught in enemy hands, such act is punished by death.

As Seijun Suzuki was a former soldier exposes some oddities carried out at wartime, it somewhat became more realistic from a vision whom stayed there and witnessed such real facts, as those soldiers refusing kill Mikami (Tamio Kawaji) in a desert area in a phony battle to conceal his guilty for being prisoner of war and some funny moments at Chinese's village when the squad returning from the front fight themselves by the best girls, actually as anti-war offering Suzuki imposes an overview less gloomy on the drama.

Oddly enough as B-production of Nikkatsu studio it overcame the bad reputation on sixties thru the times, today Sunpu Den earned several defenders and became a mandatory peace nowadays, many aspects assert such thing as the unusual cinematograph made by Suzuki's old acquaintance and partnership Kazue Nakatsuka, a must to see.

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5.