Ore wa matteru ze

This came in a boxset of Japanese crime-thrillers that I plan to work through over the next week or so, and as this was the earliest release of the five, I decided to start here.

It's very simple and tells a story about a young man and a young woman who both have connections to various shady characters that they both wish to escape from. Its unapologetically direct and for its time, it probably had a little more impact than it does now.

But it was still far from a bad watch, and it can be appreciated and enjoyed as a well-acted and well-directed film that serves as a decent crime movie for the time it was made. It's also nice to see something unpretentious and straightforward every once in a while, because you often can't make a movie nowadays unless it's got a bit more going on to complicate it.

What a great Japanese from my box of World Noir No.1 from the splendid Radiance blu-ray company. Right from the start it is wonderful and we see a bar, cafe with neon and on the waterfront and a steam train carrying goods in front of us. Yujiro Ishihara one of the stars that I have never seen before is great and we see Mie Kitahara the lovely girl I have once seen her in Crazed Fruit (1956 ). Together we see them both wearing those noir macs. The dialogue is fine and just the style and hard as we like it, the cinematography is also just as we like it as the tropes and the cliche but some new and different. He used to be a boxer and can fight and she used to sing, 'I'm a canary that forgot to sing' but she does remember. And there are the thugs that make us smile but they can be tough and towards the end the dialogue changes and the fight ends in the jazz club. I know it was a bit silly now and again but I loved it.

A bar owner on the waterfront takes action to prevent a young woman from killing herself. This leads to a nice relationship, but both characters are carrying around deep secrets. The young man was a promising boxer but one night a man provoked him into a fight and he killed him, losing any chance of realizing his dream. This has led to depression and hope of changing his life in some way. His brother has supposedly gone to Brazil and is getting things ready for them to farm some land. The odd thing is that there has been no word from the him. The young woman is a lounge singer, and she is hooked up with some bad guys who want her back. Neither of them can seem to get rid of their respective pasts. Soon, the two stories become intertwined. This isn't bad but it is slow moving and meandering. Also, there is some unfinished business at the end.

I Am Waiting, originally known as Ore Wa Matteru Ze, is a Japanese film noir that mixes elements of a personal drama with gangster thriller segments. This was the first movie for promising young director Kurahara Koreyoshi and its lead actress Kitahara Mie and lead actor Ishihara Yujiro had been working together since Crazed Fruit, originally known as Kurutta Kajitsu, the previous year and ended up getting married three years after the release of this film. This film by Nikkatsu Studio was a commercial success and inspired numerous other film noir releases throughout the late fifties, early sixties and mid-sixties in particular.

This movie pairs up two desperate outcasts. Former boxer Joji whose career has failed under dramatic circumstances is a restaurant owner who dreams of joining his brother who had left one year earlier to work on a ranch in Brazil. Club singer Saeko has narrowly avoided being sexually abused in a cabaret and is on the verge of suicide because she believes to have murdered one of her supervisors. Slowly, the two outcasts start developing feelings for each other but things take a sinister turn when they realize that their lives are more entwined than they could have been anticipating when a group of ruthless gangsters gets involved.

This film convinces on multiple levels. The story has enough little twists and turns to entertain through ninety-one gripping minutes. The desolate settings in a desolate port area show the slow rise of Japan after the humiliating ending of the Second World War. The movie oozes with atmosphere thanks to precise camera and light effects. The soundtrack and title song enhance the melancholic vibes even further. The acting performances are above average and Kitahara Mie and Ishihara Yujiro have excellent chemistry throughout. The film smoothly develops from a personal drama into a gangster thriller and ends on an emotionally and physically intense note.

To keep it short, I Am Waiting or Ore Wa Matteru Ze, is an atmospheric film noir that fluidly mixes personal drama and gangster thriller and convinces most with authentic settings, clever camera and light effects and gripping acting performances. Genre fans as well as cineasts interested is Japan's post-war cinema from the forties, fifties and sixties should certainly give this movie a try. Contemporary audiences might however find this film somewhat old-fashioned and overtly melodramatic and should start their discovery of the film noir genre with American classics instead.

A good movie with interesting characters and mood that sort of falls apart at the end when everything gets rushed to a conclusion. It's almost a classic, but just needed a bit more work to push it over the edge.