Despite our perspective on it being fogged up by years and years of uncritical nostalgia, the 60s really were a fascinating period in film. Though the first shots fired might have come from France, they echoed in national cinemas around the world, as young directors found their own interpretations of previously heretical ideas about shooting and editing. The influence of Truffaut and Godard is as visible on every level of Branded to Kill as its own subsequent influence on directors like Scorsese and Tarantino, but its real distinction is not in its historical place, but in its willingness to turn even those conventions inside out, making a comedy out of subjects typically guarded with reverence even by the iconoclastic standards of the time. In a world upheaved by gun-toters with sunglasses and record collections, Branded to Kill was rebelling against the rebellion.
Branded has a plot in the same way that a car commercial does; there are loose expository threads, but only enough to prevent it from being classified as experimental. Goro Handa (Jô Shishido) is the number three hit-man in all of Japan, but he has one major weakness: the smell of steamed rice reduces him to a simpering, thoughtless rubble of erotic charge, causing him to lose focus on whatever he is doing at the time. Conversely, he is unable to become aroused without it, which causes no end of vexation for the various women in his life, being the treacherous wife Michihiko (Isao Tamagawa) and the mysterious, death-obsessed Misako (Anne Mari), who decorates her apartment with ethered butterflies and keeps a dead bird dangling from her rear-view mirror. After botching a major assignment, Goro becomes hunted and paranoid, seeing conspiracy in every corner of his life, which occasionally manifests itself in the form of No. 1 (Kôji Nanbara), the vaunted number 1 killer in all of Japan.
The clearest parallel to be drawn is between this film and Breathless, the most-referenced kick-starter of many a film career, and it's all there: the super-cool gangsters, their Lolita molls, the baroque shots fused together more by the hot sear of escalating momentum than by any logical juxtaposition. But brilliant as it might be, fifty years hence Breathless feels like it could have been thrown together by some friends in a weekend, while every one of Branded's ornate frames looks as if hours went into it. This film is so tightly composed that it could function as a commercial for shooting people, with each set-up, surface, and female character reduced to their most basic visual appeal. In this way, they echo the Bond films and other spy thrillers popular in Britain and the United States, but if anything, this is even more concerned with visual style, and less concerned with story and logic.
But the number three hitman in Japan is no Bond, a fact that Branded takes pains to remind us. Aside from his somewhat unusual fetish, Goro is a buffoon, a clod in even the most basic social situations and not even particularly handsome. Moreover, his obsession with becoming the number 1 hit man in Japan registers not so much as cold ambition as pathetic and groveling, a criminal counterpart to the legions of brown-nosers in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. To his credit, Shishido acquits himself admirably, going out of his way to look stupid even when suiting up for the kill. In this way, he parallels the impotence of the male lead in Bonnie and Clyde (released the same year) by breaking with the spirit of studio film-making that dictated glamour for even the most reprehensible of its protagonists, thus blunting the overall effect. To be sure, Branded to Kill is glamorous, but it is in no way blunted, its very human fallibility keeping its blood hot beneath all the mod shimmer, its refusal to posture defying its strongest influences, and sharply challenging any who would follow in its path.
SPECIAL FEATURES
First off, the transfer must be noted. Branded was aging, and badly, so it's hard to overstate just how fresh and invigorating the new transfer is. But as always, the disc contains a number of interviews (with Suzuki, Masami Kuzuu, and Shishido) as well as the original theatrical trailer, and the standard Criterion booklet. If you're feeling adventurous, go for it.
"Branded To Kill (The Criterion Collection)" is on sale December 13, 2011 and is not rated. Crime, Foreign. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Written by Takeo Kimura, Hachiro Guryu, Chûsei Sone, Atsushi Yamatoya. Starring Jo Shishido, Koji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Anne Mari.
