Diagonaldi Very well executed

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD. Subtitles = three (3) stars. Director Seijun Suzuki's Jidai-Geki genre anti-war film set during the second Sino-Japanese War (in mid Twentieth Century) is a ludicrous photo play attempting to illustrate the ludicrous nature of war. The plot is about a professional sex worker (who is not a "comfort woman") in Northern China pursuing (literally--all over the screen including in the middle of military maneuvers and in the midst of battles!) a Japanese mid-ranking soldier (who is a reluctant lover at best). This is a prostitute who works out of a Japanese brothel (which seems to be worker owned and operated) consisting of about a dozen women. They are supposed to be the only sex workers in the region with each servicing, perhaps, up to a hundred military clients per 24 hours! The Chinese fighters are depicted as the "good guys" and the Japanese mostly as brutes (the exceptions being those who desert and those who will not execute the prostitute's lover who had returned (he was actually dragged by the hooker through war zones) to base camp as an injured combatant instead of following military protocol and killing himself in the field when wounded). After about 90 minutes of this repetitious nonsense, the protagonists engage in the "traditional" lover's joint suicide (which does not come soon enough for bored viewers who are still awake!). The Director does not appear to be in control of his actors and actress--they seem to have been given Carte Blanche! Whatever the reason, acting is across-the-board terrible or nonexistent--it's amateur-night all round. Leading actress Yumiko Nogawa delivers a 1.5 dimensional character with back-and-forth "acting" that ranges from phony sobbing to screaming. Cinematography (wide screen, black and white) is okay, but some scenes are on the dark side (which subtracts rather than adds to the drama when the viewer really needs to see what is going on---starting with the opening credits). Interior scene continuity is sometimes missing. The back lot exterior set looks patently phony. Special effects (mostly explosions and a bit of rear-screen projection thereof) are good. Subtitling is incomplete. Some signs are not translated. Almost all singing (of which there is quite a lot and often integral to the story line) is not subtitled. As usual, Criterion's DVD menu makes it difficult to easily determine if subtitles are turned on or off---seems to be a company tradition! Aggressive avoidance recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Uriah43 After being rejected for marriage by her lover, a prostitute named "Harumi" (Yumiko Nogawa) travels to a military outpost deep inside Manchuria to work in a brothel servicing soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. While there she meets an officer by the name of "Narita" (Isao Tamagawa) who treats her with contempt but is also quite possessive. Not long afterward she meets his orderly "Shinkichi Mikami" (Tamio Kawaji) who she quickly falls in love with. Unfortunately, Mikami is hesitant at first to return her affections because he knows that would make Narita furious. Meanwhile, the war rages on all around them. Now what I liked about this movie was the manner in which it showed the dark side of war. However, that also proved to be a weakness of sorts because at times it got too bleak. Likewise, the over-acting, typical of many Japanese movies, was a bit too much at times as well. In any case, although it's clearly a work of fiction there were some scenes which were based on historical experiences by the writer and because of that I found this to an interesting movie from an historical perspective. All things considered then, I rate it as slightly above average.

mevmijaumau Story of a Prostitute is directed by the accomplished New Wave filmmaker Seijun Suzuki and is based upon Tamura Tajiro's story (Suzuki also adapted Tajiro's story Gate of Flesh). There is another film adaptation of the story, and it's called Escape at Dawn (1950), which was written by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Senkichi Taniguchi.Seijun Suzuki himself was a war veteran (same as Tamura Tajiro), and injected some of his firsthand experience in the story. Just like the 1950 film, this is also an anti-war picture, but with elements of dark humor and absurdity which reflects his opinion on the military experience.The movie's characters aren't all that well developed like in most films by Seijun Suzuki, in other words I didn't find the film to be immersive, but it also wasn't as confusing or bizarre as Suzuki's notorious yakuza films which later got him fired from Nikkatsu. The tragic love story is enhanced by some subtle tricks, such as leaving out the "The End" title screen, showing us that tragic romances happen all the time.The filming style isn't as over the top as in Suzuki's more famous films, but is filled with enough erratic editing (which I find to be quite annoying) and strange camera tricks that you can easily recognize it as a Suzuki film. One shot I particularly like is that of the adjutant being shown as a torn photograph in order to visualize the main character's hate for him. There are also numerous well-shot landscapes and nice chiaroscuro play. Some scenes even massively employ the effect of slow motion set with increased brightness, or play the scene off like a slide show of still shots.By the way, did those grenades really take that long to blow up or was the ending just an artistic choice?7,5/10

chaos-rampant Presumably one of the "movies that didn't make sense" that led Nikkatsu Studios to promptly fire Suzuki after BRANDED TO KILL, in the process turning him into an icon of artistic defiance that inspired may, STORY OF A PROSTITUTE is at the same time a war melodrama, a rather conventional love story that you could see come out from Hollywood in the 50's, but also a Seijun Suzuki film. A genre director who slaved away from b-movie to b-movie working from scripts that had little difference from one to the next, Suzuki developed, out of artistic frustration with the trappings of cookie cutter studio film-making, an irreverent visual grammar which existed for its own pleasure. In his own way, perhaps unwittingly, he was making New Wave before most.Here we find both facets of his work, a crowdpleasing genre film and a sumptuous celebration of a visual cinema. But unlike stuff like TOKYO DRIFTER, or indeed Branded to Kill, films that often appeared to be little more than empty exercises in stylish bravura where the only reward possible for the viewer was a confirmation of Suzuki's bold, audacious approach, Story has a dramatic heart. The director approaches the love story between Mirakami, an orderly to an abusive adjutant who is brainwashed to docile acceptance of military authority, and Harumi, a passionate prostitute working a Japanese camp somewhere in Manchuria in the days of WWII, with sincerity and honesty.In the same time he punctuates the main plot with set-pieces that truly dazzle with their inventiveness. Harumi running through a shellshocked battlefield to an injured Mirakami; Harumi's fantasy of Mirakami rushing in slow-motion through a white-washed scene to save her from the abusive officer. All this filmed in stark black and white, with fast tracking shots around walls and behind wooden panels, beautiful exterior shots of Manchurian landscapes which dwarf the figures walking them, intricate framing in depth and poignant symbolic touches that give an almost existential air to proceedings.