Underworld Beauty (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 13, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Seijun SuzukiRelease Date(s)
1958 (January 28, 2025)Studio(s)
Nikkatsu Corporation (Radiance Films)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
Last seen in 2004 as a Home Vision DVD, Radiance Films’ Blu-ray of Underworld Beauty is a nice packaging of early Seijun Suzuki—two, in fact, for the price of one, as this disc also includes Suzuki’s streamlined mini-feature, Love Letter, running a brisk 40 minutes.
Though it hardly exemplifies director Seijun Suzuki’s cult status as the subversive, anarchistic auteur he’s famous as, Underworld Beauty (Ankokugai no bijo, 1958) is a crackin’ little crime melodrama nonetheless. The picture, Suzuki’s seventh, and one of four he would direct in 1958 alone, was made when the enfant terrible was still an eager-to-please contract director. Frankly, it’s not particularly any more stylish or, more to the point, any less stylish than the literally hundreds of thrillers cranked out by the dozens of still-anonymous-in-the-west directors once slaving like busy little bees at Nikkatsu and Toei (among other studios). This is not to take away from the then 35-year-old filmmaker’s effort. Rather, it merely points out the wealth of imagination pouring out of the Japanese studio system in the late-1950s.
The picture’s story is almost ritualistic in its familiarity. After spending the last several years in jail, world-weary gangster Miyamoto (Michitaro Mizushima), recovers a trio of marble-sized diamonds hidden deep in Tokyo’s sewer system. He intends to quickly dispose of the hot rocks and give the money to Mihara (Toru Abe), crippled in the botched heist and reduced to eking out a living running an oden stand. Miyamoto’s old gang is soon overcome with greed, however, and a deal to sell the diamonds to a shady American (ubiquitous gaijin talent Harold S. Conway) goes wrong with Mihara swallowing the gems before falling to his death. As Mihara is mourned by his no-good, JD sister, Akiko (Mari Shiraki), Miyamoto and the gangsters try to figure a way to retrieve the diamonds before an autopsy is conducted or the body cremated.
Underworld Beauty greatly benefits from Inui Saji’s taut script (based on his story), a model of B-picture construction. The tension and suspense flow naturally as the diamonds change hands and tucked away in some ingenious hiding spot (like inside the clay bosom of a newly-made mannequin) before being lost again in some ironic fashion. Mizushima’s older, experienced gangster trying to right an old wrong would be cliched by the 1970s but, perhaps, was relatively fresh in 1958. Suzuki would soon become identified with a new generation of Nikkatsu stars like Joe Shishido and Akira Kobayashi, but beefy Mizushima (whom Akiko refers to as “old man”) has a kind of Koji Tsuruta, Old School charm. Akiko is by far the only thing like a real character in the picture. She’s childlike in her selfishness and ruthlessness, cruel and sexy, unlovable and unloved. Also good is Kaku Takashima as Osawa, an especially toady henchman. Besides Conway, Norman French appears as a lecherous sailor, while the well-known star Hideaki Nitani has an inconsequential role as a detective.
The picture is also of interest for its historical value alone—Ritaro Nakao’s cinematography (remastered here in 4K) captures a Japan 13 years after the end of World War II but still decades away from the “Economic Miracle” with its unbridled prosperity. This was one of Nikkatsu’s first wide screen movies; Underworld Beauty being released about eight months after the introduction of the company’s CinemaScope-compatible process. (The NikkatsuScope logo nearly overwhelms the frame as the picture begins.)
Suzuki takes full advantage of the process, cramming the 2.35:1 frame with action. Working with Nakao, Suzuki also captures the seediness of Yokohama (even the city’s hospital has a grimy, unrefrigerated morgue), anticipating by five years Kurosawa’s similar treatment of the city in High and Low (1963). The picture may be a pastiche, but it’s a good one, with sewer scenes recalling The Third Man, a mannequin shop like the one in Killer’s Kiss, and a diner straight out of The Killers. The film is also gritty without the over-the-top campiness of so many later Nikkatsu thrillers (fun as they are), though gang leader Oyane (Shinsuke Ashida) does inexplicably have a stuffed alligator mounted on an office wall.
The co-feature, Love Letter (Rabu retaa, 1959) is a syrupy but picturesque romantic melodrama about Tokyo nightclub pianist Kozue (Hisako Tsukuba) still madly in love with Masao (Kyosuke Machida), a forest ranger she met years before in the mountains of Yamanouchi. The love letters they once exchanged having mysteriously stopped at his end, she decides to head back there to find him, the club’s singer (beefy baritone pop star Frank Nagai) is also in love with Kozue, yet encourages her to go.
On the snow-capped mountains, Kozue does locate Masao and his rustic cabin, but he’s acting strangely, and now inexplicably left-handed when he’d been right-handed before. He seems determined to send Kozue packing, but her endless declarations of total devotion—combined with the talky narration, the garrulous film has more dialogue that many full-length features—leave him decidedly conflicted. But will Masao’s secret tear them apart?
Though more overwrought than Douglas Sirk’s concurrent films, Love Letter rises a notch or two above its genre tropes with its excellent black-and-white NikkatsuScope cinematography and use of locations, contrasting the wide-open snowy spaces of the mountains with the almost noir look of scenes back in Tokyo, all that footage set after dark.
The short film was something of a vehicle for Frank Nagai, an immensely popular singer back in the day, performing a showy number here, but his role is limited to the opening and closing scenes, and he’s not much of an actor. Kyosuke Machida turns up in innumerable gangster films and must have been a pretty good English-speaker, since he’s also in American films shot there such as The Yakuza and Mr. Baseball.
Hisako Tsukuba may have been a typical Nikkatsu (and, later, Toei) ingenue, but after abruptly retiring in 1963 she moved to the U.S., though she returned to Japan for a smattering of films in 1966 and ’68. After that, under her married name, Chato Van Leeuwen, she became a political activist and exploitation film producer. Her low-budget Tender Loving Care attracted the attention of Roger Corman, who assigned her the job of producing Joe Dante’s Piranha (and its many sequels). Who’d have thought it?
Love Letter is in less pristine shape, with considerable frame wobble in the first reel, but for such an obscure title, even projected onto a big screen, the transfer is impressive.
Overall, however, both black-and-white films look great. Radiance’s Region “A” and “B” release packs both films onto a single disc with no discernible loss of high-def quality. The LPCM 2.0 mono audio (Japanese only) is excellent, supported by good optional English subtitles.
High-def trailers for both films are included, along with an audio commentary on Love Letter by William Carroll, as well as a 15-minute interview with Japanese film critic Mizuki Kodama, discussing Suzuki’s long career. A 20-page booklet includes an essay by Claudia Siefen-Leitich, and a review of Underworld Beauty by Seizo Okada.
Honestly, I prefer these earlier Suzuki films to many of his later, more self-consciously pretentious ones. Each exemplifies the high quality of even ordinary program pictures during Japan’s Golden Age of filmmaking. Highly Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV