Suzuki Seijun 100
Screening Dates
  • August 17, 2023 6:30
35mm Print

If you see only one Suzuki, this should be it—a whacked-out yakuza thriller.”

Tom Charity, The Rough Guide to Film

Tasked with making a vehicle for actor-singer Watari Tetsuya to croon the title song, Suzuki concocted this yarn about a reformed yakuza on the run from his former comrades. The film is mainly an excuse to stage an escalating series of playful musical numbers and over-the-top fight scenes. Popping with garish colours, self-parodic style, and avant-garde visual design, Tokyo Drifter embodies a late-1960s zeitgeist in which trash and art joyfully commingle. With influences that range from Pop Art to 1950s Hollywood musicals, and from farce and absurdist comedy to surrealism, Suzuki shows off his formal acrobatics in a film that is clearly meant to mock rather than celebrate the yakuza film genre” (Nikolaos Vryzidis, Directory of World Cinema: Japan). —Tom Vick

In Japanese with English subtitles

This opening-night screening of Tokyo Drifter will include a video introduction by William Carroll.

Inspired lunacy … Somehow, it still just about works as a thriller.”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out 

One of the most brilliant genre movies ever made.”

Tony Rayns, Sight and Sound
Supported by
Japan Foundation
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