Pale Flower

Pale Flower (Kawaita Hana) (1964)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Masahiro Shinoda

Starring: Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki, Naoki Sugiura, Shin'ichiro Mikami

From: Shochiku

Friday night I skimmed through parts of Special When Lit, A Pinball Documentary (as I somehow never reviewed it at Letterboxd) and revisited Hardcore then The Yakuza as both were on Turner Classic Movies. Here's another movie about the Yakuza, which was seen on Thursday night: 

An exciting movie considering it's about a card game I know little about.

This was viewed on Thursday night but I held off on a review until late tonight so I could post something at an unusual time. I haven't viewed much of either Japanese New Wave or French New Wave but from what I know, they are similar; I will eventually see more Seijun Suzuki but for now, something from Masahiro Shinoda-my first from him, although some of his work I've heard of-will do.

Of course this is rather stylish and focuses more on the story than the characters and dialogue, although at least they were still interesting. A member of the Yakuza (Muraki) is released from prison after a few years. He now realizes how futile life can be, although he gets wrapped up in a gambling den and a game that's played... it took Google to tell me that it was some sort of contest involving Hanafuda cards, which have different flowers on them. In a note of trivia, Nintendo has been a company since 1889 as they started out making Hanafuda cards. Anyhow, the real important aspect is the existential relationship between Muraki and a young cardshark lady-Saeko-whose presence at such events is highly unusual. She is upper-class so she is a thrill-seeker and no surprise that this leads to trouble. 

I don't want to give too much away concerning the plot-besides, it's more a visual experience anyhow-so I'll just say that if you enjoy such films, this will probably get a lot of love. Some scenes stand out-including a car chase, a dream sequence and one late in the film w/ operatic singing on the soundtrack-and as expected this is just so effortlessly cool. What helps out in that regard is a jazz soundtrack that usually sounds avant-garde, yet was still fine with me even if avant-garde in general isn't always for me. The same goes for uber-stylish flicks like this. Somehow, it managed to work in this case. I shouldn't make any promises as I always state I'm going to check out something in the future-usually, that hasn't happened yet-but I should check out more from Masahiro Shinoda.