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Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: 10 Mar 2015 10:24:00
Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Fighting Elegy (1966)
DVD9 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 | Cover + Booklet | 01:26:06 | 5,55 Gb
Audio: Japanese AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Art-house, Drama | The Criterion Collection #269

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Stars: Hideki Takahashi, Yûsuke Kawazu, Junko Asano

High schooler Kiroku Nanbu yearns for the prim, Catholic Michiko, but her only desire is to reform Kiroku’s sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, Kiroku channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence. Fighting Elegy (Kenka Erejii) is a unique masterpiece in the diverse career of Seijun Suzuki, combining the director’s signature bravura visual style with a brilliantly focused satire of machismo and fascism.

IMDB | Criterion | DVDBeaver | Wikipedia | Midnight Eye

The first time around, I was a little lost on this one. I didn't have the proper knowledge of its historical context. The Criterion liner notes are a big help. I just wish I had read them more recently. This is a satire of the militaristic attitude that eventually lead Japan into WWII. I remembered it being a comedy. It does have its comic moments, mostly involving Kiroku's uncontrollable erections, but it is rather serious in tone. Well, that's even a little weird. Suzuki is able to create a remarkable balance between the film's serious themes, its action sequences, as well as its comic touches. All the while, he creates a film of outstanding imagery, gorgeous cinematography, and artful editing.

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

To think, Suzuki Seijun had probably no ability to choose which films he made. He was a bit lucky to land this one, though, as it was written by Kaneto Shindo, who had to be hot stuff after having already directed both The Island and Onibaba (though I wouldn't know how those films were received in Japan). This is one of only two Suzuki films that stand outside of the yakuza genre, so here (and in Story of a Prostitute) he was able to deal with deeper themes than normal. But anyway, Suzuki had little control over what material he was to direct, one way or another. I find his ability to create great art infinitely more impressive than any number of cinematic artists who had more or less complete control over their own work. It would be utterly wrong not to include Suzuki in the pantheon of the world's greatest film artists.
IMDB Reviewer
Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Japanese B-movie maverick Seijun Suzuki’s films often mixed sex and violence in bizarre and intriguing ways. In Fighting Elegy, he again mixes the two, except this time it’s in an either/or proposition. The film’s hero, devoutly Catholic teenager Kiroku (Hideki Takahashi), is faced with sexual temptations and turns to increasing violence as a way to sublimate his adolescent carnal desires. So, even as sex and violence are put into conflict with each other, they are completely intertwined in that one stands in for the other.

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

The film is set in Japan in the early 1930s, a crucial period for modern Japanese history in which the kind of militaristic imperialism that would lead the country to side with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in World War II was solidifying in the national mindset. In a sense, then, Kiroku functions as a metonym for Japan as a whole: an imaginative, eager, ambitious young man who finds himself on the road to fascism. Kiroku is in love with Michiko (Junko Asano), his landlord’s sweet-faced, piano-playing daughter, and the tug-of-war within him is accentuated by her constantly trying to find positive avenues for his energy. But, in the end, playing piano doesn’t hold a candle to bar brawls and street fights.

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Fighting Elegy traces Kiroku’s steady descent into a world of violence, one that eventually gets him kicked out of his high school and banished to a rural area where he falls in with militaristic gangs that feed on a steady diet of aggression. At this point, the notion of sexuality is completely sublimated to violence, as his fellow gang members insist that chasing girls is for “sissies”; it’s a waste of precious energy that could be better spent fighting. This eventually leads to Kiroku’s becoming involved with radical right-wing ideologue Kita Ikki, a real-life historical figure who wrote fascist tracts and organized a military coup d’etat that resulted in the assassination of numerous Japanese leaders on February 26, 1936.

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Of course, because the film was directed by Seijun Suzuki, the heady subject matter is approached with a sometimes broadly comic sensibility that adds discord to the historical weightiness. Suzuki’s theme is the absurdity of violence, which is central to his most well-known films (1963’s Youth of the Beast, 1967’s Branded to Kill, 2001’s Pistol Opera). The violence of the fight scenes in Fighting Elegy, which is expertly choreographed and filmed, is often tempered by the inclusion of cartoonish sound effects. The gang brawls are designed to look like wars, and their ridiculousness is underscored in one scene where a massive throw-down is interrupted by Kiroku’s father pretending to be a police officer. Suzuki also revels in the absurd myopia of the adolescent libido (embarrassing unexpected erections and all), showing the world through Kiroku’s overheated eyes (although he, like all the other adolescents in the film, is played by an actor who is clearly a decade or more too old for the part).

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

However, Fighting Elegy is not a typical Suzuki film, in that it is not a deconstructed genre piece inflated with hot stylized air and a wicked sense of perversion. Shot in austere black and white (primarily due to the limited budget), Fighting Elegy is one of Suzuki’s most restrained films, particularly considering the fact that it was released in 1966, a year before he was fired from the Nikkatsu studio for his increasingly outrageous films.

Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

He does employ some of his signature tricks, including strange camera angles, associational editing, and a few visual flourishes like mobile split screens. There are also moments of almost rapturous beauty, particularly some of the final shots in which snow blankets the narrative. But, overall it is an atypically restrained work from Suzuki, who clearly had strong feelings about the film’s theme and its reflection of the missteps his country had taken 30 years earlier, the scars of which were still raw.
James Kendrick, QNetwork
Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]
Fighting Elegy / The Born Fighter (1966) [The Criterion Collection #269] [ReUp]

Special Features:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Original theatrical trailer
- improved English subtitles
- Essay by critic/historian Tony Rayns

All Credits goes to Original uploader.

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