Seijun Suzuki

Gate of Flesh

Gate of Flesh

In the shady black markets and bombed-out hovels of post–World War II Tokyo, a tough band of prostitutes eke out a dog-eat-dog existence, maintaining tenuous friendships and a semblance of order in a world of chaos. But when a renegade ex-soldier stumbles into their midst, lusts and loyalties clash, with tragic results. With Gate of Flesh, visionary director Seijun Suzuki delivers a whirlwind of social critique and pulp drama, shot through with brilliant colors and raw emotions.

Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1964
  • 90 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.35:1
  • Japanese
  • Spine #298

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Interview with director Seijun Suzuki and production designer Takeo Kimura
  • Stills gallery of rare archival production photos and art
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by noted Asian-cinema critic Chuck Stephens

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Interview with director Seijun Suzuki and production designer Takeo Kimura
  • Stills gallery of rare archival production photos and art
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by noted Asian-cinema critic Chuck Stephens

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse
Gate of Flesh
Cast
Joe Shishido
Shintaro Ibuki
Yumiko Nogawa
Borneo Maya
Satoko Kasai
Komasa Sen
Koji Wada
Abe
Tomiko Ishii
Roku
Kayo Matsuo
Mino
Misako Tominaga
Machiko
Keisuke Noro
Ishii
Chico Rolando
Catholic Priest
Credits
Director
Seijun Suzuki
Music
Naozumi Yamamoto
Editing
Akira Suzuki
Production design
Takeo Kimura
Cinematography
Shigeyoshi Mine
Screenplay
Goro Tanada
From the novel by
Taijiro Tamura
Producer
Kaneo Iwai

Current

A Salute to Seijun Suzuki
A Salute to Seijun Suzuki
Cinema lost one of its most venerated maestros of excess last week with the passing of director Seijun Suzuki, whose signature films from the 1960s exploded the conventions of the Japanese studio system. While honing his craft in dozens of films cran…
Takeo Kimura, 1918–2010
Takeo Kimura, 1918–2010
In “the cinema of flourishes”—as scholar David Bordwell once memorably characterized the long and grand tradition of Japanese filmmaking—few flourish makers have flown so high as Takeo Kimura, longtime Seijun Suzuki collaborator and art direc…

By Chuck Stephens

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Seijun Suzuki

Director

Seijun Suzuki
Seijun Suzuki

According to critic Manohla Dargis, “To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.” Suzuki played chaos like jazz in his movies, from the anything-goes yakuza thrillers Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill to the daring postwar dramas of human frailty Gate of Flesh and Story of a Prostitute to the twisted coming-of-age story Fighting Elegy; he never concerned himself with moderation, cramming boundless invention into his beautifully composed frames, both color and black-and-white. Suzuki first pursued film after returning home to Tokyo from service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and failing university entrance exams. Following an unsatisfying stint as an assistant director at Shochiku, Suzuki was lured in 1954 to the recently reopened Nikkatsu studio, which was hiring fresh talent to appeal to a new kind of youth audience. He flourished there for years, with such films as Take Aim at the Police Van and especially Youth of the Beast, a commercial breakthrough for him. Yet his bosses became more and more opposed to his increasingly surreal visual stylings and lack of attention to narrative coherence, and after he made Branded to Kill, which a superior deemed “incomprehensible,” they unceremoniously (and illegally) revoked his contract. Of course, as any true Suzuki fan (and they are legion) knows, the incomprehensibility is part of the fun, and today his sixties works are considered some of the most essential of the Japanese New Wave.