Amai yoru no hate (1961) User Reviews

A story about a guy who leans on women too quickly

[ebiros2 · 8/10 · 17 July 2009]

It's rare to see a Japanese movie that's carried almost entirely by the acting ability of its star but Amai Yoru no Hate is such a movie, and actor Masahiko Tsugawa does a masterful job of portraying the main character Jiro Tezuka.

Jiro is a sales clerk at a department store. He's pretty dedicated and goes on doing his daily duties diligently until he meets Harumi (Teruyo Yamagami) a waitress in a small hole in a wall restaurant. Jiro frequents a bar that's run by Soko (Michiko Saga) the daughter of the owner of the department store he works in. Soko is looking for a charismatic hostess to work at her bar, and Jiro out of kindness introduces Harumi to Soko. Harumi comes to shack with Jiro but she won't let him touch her. She's just free loading off of him until she meets Hondo (Osamu Takizawa) a wealthy owner of a chemical plant. Hondo offers her a place to live in an apartment. Jiro also meets Oka (Takamaru Sasaki), also a chemical plant owner who's business is going downhill. He meets his widowed daughter Masae (Hiroko Sugita). Now circulating among the rich set, Jiro feels inferior about his status and decides to climb up the social ladder by going to bed first with Masae, and then Soko, but he still has something going with Harumi.

The story contains many anecdotes about what not to do with your life, and writer Yoichi Maeda and director Yoshishige Yoshida does a credible job of depicting coat tailing mindset of the youth in Japan, and cruelty of the people in power. The first lesson seems to be not to be kind to someone who doesn't deserve it. Jiro's downward slide starts when he tries to help Harumi. But he's not without blame either because his only vision of making it is by latching onto rich women.

Great movie because it shows the underbelly of hidden desires we have in our hearts, in a microcosm set within the Japanese society.

There are bit too many coincidences in this story to be a real story, but everybody ends up where they should which seems to be the point of this movie. To me this movie played little like a horror movie. Others may have different take on it.

Bitter End of a Sweet Night (1961)

[mevmijaumau · 16 February 2015]

Bitter End of a Sweet Night, loosely inspired by several freedom- concerning aspects of Stendhal's novel The Red and the Black, is an early effort from Yoshishige Yoshida, originally a Shochiku Studio-bound filmmaker who would later dominate the Japanese New Wave and become one of the greatest directors of all time.

The movie, fitting in with the rest of Yoshida's early works, is strictly a social critique. The complex-ridden, opportunistic anti-hero Jiro (played by Masahiko Tsugawa, who starred in many Shochiku films) is desperate to achieve his goal of increasing his social status. He tries to get ahead through his relationships with three women, each having a different social status. Of course, his plans don't go far and the title itself probably references this.

One thing I found weird about the film is the behavior of a certain character - Harumi, a teenage waitress, who in the beginning basically gets kidnapped by Jiro (an utter stranger to her) and doesn't even seem to mind. Other than that baffling start, the movie is easy to follow and has a smooth, almost noir-like pace.

Yoshida's visual compositions, naturally, don't reach the amazing avant- garde extremes of his later works, but that's not to say the movie isn't shot well. In fact, the dark tones and the Antonioni-esque industrial setting serve as vital components to the brisk visual outlook. I'm especially fond of the scene taking place on a foggy lake, offering us some marvelous shots. Yoshida also likes to make use of circular motifs, such as Jiro circling the deserted motorcycle racing track or going on a circular amusement park ride. Some visual elements also make a full circle, like the crashed, burning car at the beginning which foreshadows a similar accident at the end.

Bitter End of a Sweet Night lacks many of Yoshida's trademark choices, but you can nevertheless still see the potential. This movie was made before he met his future wife Mariko Okada, but Michiko Saga, who plays Soko, has a similar wonderful screen presence. All in all, probably not the best introduction to Yoshida, but it's one of his most down-to-earth films, so keep that in mind if you're not keen on art-house too much.

A man abducts a woman and gets her a job

[grandmastersik · 1/10 · 20 November 2014]

A sales clerk in a department shop gets blown off by a waitress in an out-of-the-way cafe, while the girl he's just spent the night with looks on as if not caring what he does. You'll wonder if girl's a prostitute for 10 seconds at the very most, be surprised by the man going back to the cafe to pretty much force the waitress - someone he'd only seen the once - onto the back of his motorbike and back to his place to live with him.

If you're still watching, you'll be wondering what's happening, as the ridiculously unrealistic character events continue, with the man getting the waitress a job at a bar and escorting some drunken patron home.

With the only other "review" on the site pretty much detailing every plot point and the ending, you'll feel even more justified in turning this mess of a film off, which is exactly what I did, because I seriously doubted something so stupid could get any better.