The Shape of the Night – Trailers from Hell

Another eye-opener from 1960s Japan: the story of a young woman’s downfall is told with truth and conviction, with a particularly powerful performance from star Miyuki Kuwano. Director Noboru Nakamura’s intimate account is bathed in the neon of the vice district; the beautiful script makes us realize how easily girls get caught up in sexual exploitation. The show, restored here only ten years ago, simply shines: it makes no concessions to sensationalism.

The shape of the night
Region A + B Blu-ray
Appearance
1964 / Color / 2:35 Widescreen / 106 min. / Released April 29, 2024 / You are not a henrin / Available from Radiance Films / £17.99
Starring: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijirô Hira, Keisuke Sonoi, Bunta Sugawara, Masuyo Iwamoto, Misako Tominaga, Isao Kimura.
Cinematography: Tôichirô Narushima
Artistic Director: Kiminobu Satô
Film Editor: Keiichi Uraoka
Original music: Masanobu Higure
Scenario by Toshihide Gondo from a novel by Kyoko Ohta
Produced by Akihiko Shimada
Directed by Noboru Nakamura

Taking a chance on this Radiance disc yielded a pleasant surprise, another Japanese drama filmed with deep feeling and visual assurance. Noboru Nakamura’s The shape of the night tells a familiar story without sensationalism or ironic detachment. The theme is “the way of all flesh,” but no moral code is imposed except that of humanist common sense. The exploitation of women is cruel and destructive, and the worst tragedy is the downfall of the human spirit.

Nakamura gives his film a stunningly colorful surface, but one that is not allowed to glorify the events. The storyline follows only a few characters, with a strong focus on the factory girl played by Miyuki Kuwano. Her command of the screen is comparable to that of any Hollywood leading lady.

We already know that Japanese genre films from the 1950s and 1960s went beyond the boundaries imposed on American films in terms of content. The shape of the night is never explicit with details of prostitution, and the footage contains no nudity. Yet it is more honest and candid than any American film with a Production Code seal; it is hard to believe it wasn’t made decades later.

Partly told in flashbacks, the story of Yoshie (Miyuki Kuwano) is a cheerful and energetic factory girl. By day she makes colored neon tubes and to earn some extra money she takes a job as a hostess in a small club. There she becomes easy prey for Eiji (Mikijiro Hira), a handsome young man who wins her over as soon as she serves him a drink. Everything Eiji tells Yoshie is a lie. He is not a businessman, but a novice Yakuza. It is no contest, because the naive Yoshie remains in love with Eiji, even after he rapes her and asks her for loans. Step by step he lures her into sleeping with other men for money. When he asks her to walk the streets, she rebels and goes home. A day later she is tricked into walking into a room full of Eiji’s Yakuza colleagues – to be taught a lesson.

Yoshie may be a fool, but there are millions of innocents like her, pawns ready to be exploited by a man who knows how to gain a young woman’s trust. (God help lonely girls on the Internet.) The woman who runs the club doesn’t tip Yoshie off to Eiji’s connections—she’s probably already paying protection money to the gangsters. Where exactly is Yoshie supposed to get information about the traps that await her?

Toshidi Gondo’s screenplay makes the path to degradation perfectly logical, and the excellent actress Kuwano brings a sense of truth to the story. The hapless Yoshie is trusting and loyal in her own way. Eiji abuses her at times, but he does not outright threaten her, as his Yakuza brothers do. Yoshie chooses to stay with Eiji, even though she hates him, and most of all, she hates herself. Once someone loses their self-confidence, other forces come into play. Yoshie loses her grip on her own personality.

Yoshie goes home only once. Her parents can guess that she’s “been with a man,” but they mostly complain that she doesn’t bring home any money. Yoshie pushes away her loving brother, which reflects her new self-image as unclean. She is unable to make satisfying connections elsewhere. The only other prostitute Yoshie talks to is Keiko (Yoshiko Hiromura), who tells her how to behave if she gets arrested, and who says she’s saving up for an escape to another life.

The riskiest contact is Hiroshio Fujii (Keisuke Sonoi), a regular customer who wants Yoshie to run away with him. That would be a great idea, if the underworld didn’t know where to find people. But it’s not an easy solution. For a man who frequents prostitutes, Fujii talks too much in moral terms. He has little patience for Yoshie’s doubts and hesitations — how can she have so little appreciation for his great sacrifice to save her? The last thing she needs is another man trying to control her life.

We also understand Yoshie’s gloomy mood when she meets a friend from the neon factory, who is now married and has a family, albeit with little money. Fujii assumes that Yoshie is ‘just like other good women’ and wants exactly the same thing.

In other words, this insightful 1960s Japanese drama is more feminist than anything Hollywood can muster. Typical “adult” fare at the time was lame dramas and nonsensical comedies that portrayed women as hysterical idiots.

By approaching the subject in a non-melodramatic way, The shape of the night makes Yoshie’s tragedy inevitable. In a matter of weeks, she goes from a carefree young woman to someone traumatized by gang rape, clinging for safety to the man who ruined her life. Yoshie bears the brunt of a male crime syndicate that indeed treats women as animals for pleasure and profit. Eiji himself is a slave to the Yakuza hierarchy and maintains his illusion of virility by dominating Yoshie.

But director Nakamura lets the relationship develop further. Eiji is injured in a knife fight, which shifts the sexual dynamic of their relationship. It’s almost disturbing when Eiji begins to fulfill Yoshie’s needs. The humiliated “couple” seems equally invested in a cultural system of male domination. Eiji’s personality change is the one thing Yoshie can’t stand — she was on better terms with the brute who beat and exploited her.

We’ve all seen programs that shock us with images of dirty, filthy practices. The shape of the night goes in a different direction. Eiji and Yoshie aren’t living in luxury, but they’re not in the gutter either. Yoshie stands by a store window and tells Keiko that she wants to buy so much. Yoshie never sees more of the world than a few busy meat market streets. We stay in her world of cold streets and neon signs. Keiko tells Yoshie that getting out and “running away to where no one can find me” is the only answer, because staying on the streets will soon turn into hell somehow. For Yoshie, that time comes when she is no longer able to make her own choices and can no longer recognize her own personality.

from Radiance Region A + B Blu-ray by The shape of the night is a magnificent disc. Miyuki Kuwano’s gigantic images must have been intimidatingly beautiful on a large ‘Shochiku Grandscope’ screen. The film is full of strong compositions that tell the story without extra dialogue. The direction is clear and well-defined. The film tells ‘the same old story’, yet we feel as if we are seeing it for the first time.

The film is in great condition, with pristine visuals and audio. The IMDB lists no U.S. release in the 1960s, a time when Japanese films quietly circulated in specialty theaters in a few major cities. In Los Angeles, there was once the Toho La Breaand the Kokusai at Crenshaw. We went to see the “Baby Cart and Son” films there and were the only non-Asians in the audience. This restoration was shown at film festivals 11 years ago. It is exactly the kind of very memorable “discovery” that we are so happy to see on disc.

Radiance tracked down the director’s son, Yoshio Nakamura, who recounts his memories of his father, a family man who “talked about movies a lot but didn’t bring technical discussions home from work.” An Easter egg is an extra five minutes of humorous side story. Critic Tom Mes offers a brief history of the Shochiku studio, illustrated with film clips. It’s not easy to follow, but the details are fascinating. In the late 1960s, when other studios were turning to softcore sex films to survive, Shochiku kept going by returning to more traditional fare. Their ultimate success was the long-running Tora-San series, comedies and dramas for the whole family that have been a must-see Japanese attraction twice a year for more than ten years.

Chuck Stephens’ essay discusses a number of Japanese classics that deal with prostitution: films by Kenji Mizoguchi and the powerful When a woman walks up the stairs. None are as direct as The shape of the nightA young woman might see this movie and think, “I could make that mistake too.”

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The shape of the night
Region A + B Blu-ray rates:
Film: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Interview with Yoshio Nakamura, son of the director (16 min)
Visual essay Big changes by Tom Mes about this history of Shochiku studios (13 min)
Easter egg (5 min)
Add a pamphlet with an essay by Chuck Stephens.
Are they suitable for the deaf and hard of hearing? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Rated: August 20, 2024
(7184 pieces)