Take a
look at this filmmaker warning you not to pirate his films:
He may
not look it, but that gent, who passed away a few weeks back after being struck
by a taxi in Tokyo, was a politically radical filmmaker who was capable of
conveying the greatest cruelty and the most delicate uncertainty on film.
He
was a critically lauded artist who had a youth among the Yakuza (in fact he directly
calls himself a Yakuza in this interview footage)
and wasn't allowed to visit the U.S. because of his internationally praised
documentary about the terrorist group the United Red Army. (He was thought to
have “consorted with” them by making the docu.)
Koji
Wakamatsu was indeed a multifaceted filmmaker whose sudden death at 76 calls
attention to his 105 films (the number varies from filmo to filmo, but all of
his obits mention “over 100 films”). In the last decade of his life he
concentrated on crafting “higher” works like Caterpillar
(2010), United Red Army (2008), and The Millennial
Rapture (2012), as well as a film released this year in Asia about Yukio
Mishima's last day called 11.25: The Day He Chose His Own
Fate; the film has not yet been shown in NYC and its environs.
Wakamatsu
was thus an “arthouse favorite” by the time he became a senior, something that
was never foreseen back in the Sixties and Seventies when he was making genre
films, most prominently a series of “pink” (read: erotic/softcore) features
that are still surprising and often shocking. The reason for this is his
jarring mixture of sexual elements, nasty sadistic sequences, the
aforementioned poetic images of uncertainty and loss, and politically radical
themes and dialogue.
It has
been thought by some critics that the reason he included such a pungent mix of
elements was his desire to shock the censors, and while that is undoubtedly
true, one has the impression watching his “pink” films that they were made by a
filmmaker who was both *well* acquainted with the work of the French New Wave
(the opening montage of Violated Angels [see below] is definitely derived from the work of Marker and Godard) and who firmly believed in the viewpoints espoused in his films, which ranged
from Marxism to pure nihilism.
His obits
and the interviews found online sketch his early years as a young man from a
small town who moved to Tokyo and wound up “working with gangsters” (as noted,
he himself was not so coy in his wording). He maintained that the turning point was
when he went to prison for a time – the bullying he received at the hands of
the guards hardened his anti-establishment beliefs and made him want to use the
most potent “weapon” he could think of to get back at society’s gatekeepers,
namely film.
He
initially worked for the famous Nikkatsu Studio but was fired in the
mid-Sixties for crossing the line in one of his “pink” pictures. He then
started up his own production company, for which he cranked out features with
jarring images and un-fucking-forgettable titles, starting with The
Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966). Other great Wakamatsu movie names
include: Secrets Beyond the Wall; Abortion; Violated
Angels; Naked Bullet; Violent Virgin; Serial Rapist; Go, Go
Second-time Virgin; The Woman Who Wanted to Die; Shinjuku-Mad; Ecstasy of
Angels; and the wonderfully dramatic Running in Madness, Dying in Love.
Although
he acquired respectability on the film festival circuit in the last decade and
his art movies remain for me “a subject for further research” (thanks, Mr.
Sarris), I thought I would direct you to three excellent examples of
Wakamatsu's very wild and VERY unconventional “erotic” cinema. I should also
note for the record that he served as the executive producer of Oshima's
In the Realm of the Senses, (1976), giving him an “arthouse”
credit long before films like Caterpillar had caught the eyes of Western critics.
And on to
the clips. First, a chunky bit of his 1972 film Ecstasy of the
Angels, which conveys the delirium inherent in his work:
I edited
together and uploaded two montages of Wakamatsu at his most poetic, and
“incredibly strange.” The first is comprised of three excerpts from his “pink”
film Violated Angels (1967), his feverish variation on the
story of serial killer Richard Speck, who preyed on student nurses. The opening
sequence here is a real stunner that shows KW's debt to both Godard and
(especially) Marker.
The
second montage is a distillation of ten minutes of one of the uniquely titled
films of all time, Wakamatsu's hyper-Sixties celebration of nihilism and suicide, Go, Go Second-Time Virgin
(1969). How many movie theme songs have the name "Norman Mailer" in them? The final segment from the film I include here counterpoints violent images from manga with pics of Sharon Tate, just in case you didn't know which murder-spree this film took its inspiration from (the repeated use of the word "pig" might've clued you in beforehand).
Oh, and how could I forget to mention that KW's staccato surname definitely belongs in the short of list of filmmaker names that can be said over and over and over again? (For what reason? Do you REALLY require a reason?)
Thanks
to Paul G. for the subtitled copies of the films and the list of film titles in
translation.
Readers of this blog
might be unaware that I also review new DVD releases regularly for the Disc Dish website. I'm quite proud of the work I do for the DD site, so herewith are the
reviews of mine that have appeared in the last few months.
