• Satan’s Town, ©1956 Nikkatsu Corporation

  • Satan’s Town, ©1956 Nikkatsu Corporation

  • Love Letter, ©1959 Nikkatsu Corporation

  • Love Letter, ©1959 Nikkatsu Corporation



Satan’s Town

(Akuma no machi)

Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1956

Imported 35mm Print

featuring

Seizaburo Kawazu, Ichiro Sugai, Azusa Yumi,

After getting out of prison, a gang boss decides to pull off a heist, but the team he assembles has multiple competing ambitions and scant loyalty. To viewers who are familiar with only Suzuki’s late Nikkatsu work, Satan’s Town may be the earliest work of recognizable Suzuki style. Here his formal experiments extend to a sequence shot upside down in the reflection of a swimming pool and another constructed from freeze-frames, while his trademark black humor shows itself in the numerous murders depicted and in the film’s climactic moments.

William Carroll
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Goro Shiraishi
Based On

  • from a story by Ichiro Shiro

Cinematographer
  • Kazue Nagatsuka
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 79 mins
Source
  • The Japan Foundation
Permission
  • Nikkatsu
Followed By

Love Letter
(Rabu reta)

Seijun Suzuki, Japan, 1959

FEATURING
Frank Nagai
Hisako Tsukuba
Kyosuke Machida

A pianist goes to visit her forest ranger boyfriend when he stops replying to her letters. Shot on location in the Japanese Alps and Yamaguchi, this haunting film features elaborate tracking and crane shots of snowy vistas and a turn by the popular singer Frank Nagai, who sings the film’s title track. Gorgeous landscape shots and scintillating subjective devices are evidence of Suzuki’s versatility as a filmmaker.

William Carroll

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Kiichi Ishii
Cinematographer
  • Isamu Kakita
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 'Scope 35mm
  • 40 mins
source
  • The Japan Foundation
permission
  • Nikkatsu