For decades, the prism through which the vast majority of cinephiles in the West approached and appreciated Japanese cinema was the holy trinity of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and – first among equals in terms of popularity and influence – Kurosawa. In recent years, however, the situation has altered considerably, as Criterion and others have steadily expanded the canon (or our understanding of it) beyond those hallowed humanists by casting light on an ever-growing roster of past and present masters representing every mode of cinema imaginable, and a handful less easily fathomed. Alongside (roughly now, roughly) such directors as Oshima, Imamura, Shinoda, and Matsumoto, Seijun Suzuki – whose career receives a richly revelatory collaborative retrospective this month at the HFA and the Brattle – represented an art-house alternative to the holy trinity, one attuned to 1960s youth culture, alive to the possibilities of vivid color, aggressive design, and Godardian editing, and as virtuosic with the infinite varieties of irony as Ozu, for instance, was sensitive to the subtleties of human emotion. Mining a then faintly scandalous but now merely fashionable fascination with underworlds and their underfolk, Suzuki’s best-known late ‘60s works (Branded to Kill, say, and Tokyo Drifter) are jazz-soaked gems set among yakuza, prostitutes and night clubs, and subject to the avant-pop tricks then in trade.

https://youtu.be/ZA_qbqRMtGQ

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