Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: Seijun Suzuki

I don’t think the French have made a great film since Godard got boring, but they still seem to be cinema’s arbiters of greatness: they built up Tarantino into who he is, and pointed out the genius of Erich von Stroheim, Samuel Fuller, Budd Boetticher, and Don Siegel. They informed America that they’d a genre (note the French) called Film Noir (again, the French).

So where are they with Seijun Suzuki?

Nowhere.

Will he get a lifetime achievement Oscar? Hell no. An AFI salute? Dream on. Tarantino, meanwhile steals from him, nearly every day. Every time Tarantino has a gangster in one of his films and that villain says something comically bizarre while killing someone—very likely he’s stealing from Suzuki. The same with Wong Kar-Wai. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. They’re stealing from the best.

Seijun Suzuki may be the greatest living filmmaker you’ve never heard of. Most of his work was done in the early to mid-nineteen sixties—and they were frankly bizarre. Start with his best, Branded to Kill (that’s the film that got him blackballed for ten years). It’s poetic and (and something the French respect) existential. It also stars the Japanese Bogart, Joe Shishido (Shishido has his face altered to look more menacing—that’s actor dedication). After that, pick any of Suzuki’s films: the wildly beautiful Tattooed Life, and one of my favorites, Tokyo Drifter—one of the more “Tarantino” of Suzuki’s films. They’re mostly on Netflix. Some are even available for streaming. And this director is still alive: he should be lauded, if not by the pros, then by us, in front of our own TVs.

Bio: Meakin Armstrong is Guernica’s fiction editor. Read his last recommendation of Mercury Theatre on the Air here.

Tags: film, recommendation, tarantino, tokyo

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