• Thursday, May 12, 2016

    7:30 PM (83 mins)
    BAMPFA

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  • Friday, Jun 10, 2016

    9 PM (83 mins)
    BAMPFA

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Tokyo Drifter

(Tokyo nagaremono)

Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1966

Digital Restoration!

  • Introduction
    Tom Vick

    Tom Vick is curator of film at the Freer | Sacker, Smithsonian Institution, and author of Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki. PLEASE NOTE: VICK WILL INTRODUCE MAY 12 SCREENING ONLY.

featuring

Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Ryuji Kita,

Tasked with making a vehicle for actor/singer Tetsuya Watari to croon the title song, Suzuki concocted this crazy yarn about a reformed yakuza on the run from his former comrades. The film is mainly an excuse to stage an escalating series of goofy musical numbers and over-the-top fight scenes. Popping with garish colors, self-parodic style, and avant-garde visual design, Tokyo Drifter embodies a late-1960s zeitgeist in which trash and art joyfully comingle. “The result is one of the most brilliant genre movies ever made” (Tony Rayns).

Tom Vick
FILM DETAILS 

Screenwriter

  • Yasunori Kawauchi

Cinematographer

  • Shigeyoshi Mine

Language

  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles

Print Info

  • Color
  • 'Scope DCP
  • 83 mins

Permission

  • Janus Films/Criterion Collection