Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza
|人生劇場 飛車角と吉良常
Status: Released
Runtime: 109
Release Date: 25/10/1968
Origin Language: ja
Origin Country: JP
Languages: Japanese
Production: Toei Company
Countries: Japan
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0 (0)
With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.
