‘Pale Flower’ or — Darker Than the Grave?
A gangster, Muraki (Ryō Ikebe), is released from prison after killing a member of a rival gang three years previously. Returning to his old gambling den he spies a young woman, Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a seemingly wealthy sensation seeker with a reckless attitude to betting and life. Muraki seems to be seeking some form of missing stability; Saeko is determined to push life as far as she can. These two disparate characters form up a platonic relationship with Muraki helping Saeko gain access to the highest stakes game in town and the thrill, win or lose, she desires whilst she provides Muraki someone to look after.
These gambling dens are autoclaves of pressurised masculinity as figures from the underworld click and clack their hanafuda tiles (flower cards) to the incantations of the dealer, yet Saeko’s elegant femininity is appreciated by the gamblers, especially the brooding, distant drug addict and thug, Yoh, who she suspects might be able to provide her with more dangerous forms of excitement.
Meanwhile, Muraki has been summoned by his old boss with the offer of a job that needs urgent attention, a job best carried out by someone without family to support as the consequences could be extreme. Muraki accepts and for a couple of reasons: it’s who and what he is and reintegration into society for him is now impossible; this could be an opportunity for salvation, just not his own.
‘Pale Flower’ (1964) is an extraordinarily captivating, fascinating, beautiful and, ultimately, death-black movie that leaves you in a quivering jolt. It starts almost like a character study as we coolly follow Muraki attempt to ease himself back into his pre-incarceration life with pretty much no success. Indeed, he seems determined to reject any and all forms of support. Once he meets Saeko it shifts into an examination of mutual dependency against the backdrop of the underbelly of Japanese society.
Yet this is also a yakuza movie as film noir; an exercise in style, lighting and seeing just how black that ‘noir’ can be made (answer — very!). It’s about a damaged man who meets a woman who drips death that would feel at home in many a Hollywood noir of the 40s. There’s even a dream sequence halfway through that feels of a kin with drug sequences in films such as ‘Murder, My Sweet’ (1944) where our hero is slipped a Mickey allowing for some groovy visual shenanigans.
And oh, what visual shenanigans!
‘Pale Flower’ might function like a noir of the past in many ways but it is firmly focused on looking forward, even if it’s into an awaiting abyss. The black and white cinematography is striking beyond belief and creates an atmosphere that blends perfectly nightmare and reality. This is a world of precise shadows with razor-sharp terminators you could almost cut yourself on.
This nightmare world is augmented by a truly phenomenal soundtrack by composer Toru Takemitsu which, with its distorted brass, sounds like a jazzy noir score that’s been meticulously shattered, splintered and ripped apart until it is barely recognisable. This splintering effect extends to the sound design with Takemitsu incorporating (creating?) the clicking of the gambling tiles into the overall sonic tapestry and the sensation created is astonishing.
The screenplay was by Masaru Baba who co-wrote Imamura’s ‘Vengeance is Mine’ (1979) so there’s a sure hand on the tiller when it comes to portraying and examining society and violence and how people movie through them both. What violence there is, and there is shockingly little, is suitably nasty, pathetic and depressing when it does occur but it is also where any possible salvation might exist. Or is that nothing more than the last wish of a deluded and naive idiot?
‘Pale Flower’ is a remarkable noir and a demonstration of how cinema can blend character, narrative, visuals and sound to create something genuinely overwhelming. Any fan of Japanese New Wave black and white cinematography should check this out as you’ll be in heaven, even as the film itself drags you to hell.
