House of Bamboo

Film · Tokyo Stories: Japan in the Global Imagination

Saturday, December 7, 4:30 PM

The great Samuel Fuller was among the first Hollywood directors allowed to shoot on location in Japan following the end of the war, and the first to capture the country’s exoticized vistas in full color CinemaScope—including, in the words of the film’s original trailer, “the wonders of Fujiyama” and “seething, swarming, modern Tokyo.” U.S. military detective (Robert Stack) goes undercover in Tokyo to infiltrate a crime syndicate run by an ex-G.I. (Robert Ryan) and gets mixed up with a “kimono girl,” played by transnational film star Shirley Yamaguchi. A hard-boiled and entertaining thriller that offers a fascinating glimpse of Tokyo immediately after the American occupation and a decade before it opened its doors to the rest of the world with the 1964 Olympics.

1955, USA, 102 min., 35mm, in English and Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Samuel Fuller. With Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi, Cameron Mitchell.

“A masterpiece that pinpoints the sublime in Fuller’s sensationalism and earns every inch of its widescreen real estate.”

—Time Out New York

Part of Tokyo Stories: Japan in the Global Imagination

Tickets: $14/$11 seniors, students & persons with disabilities/$10 members

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