The Ceiling at Utsunomiya
(Kaii Utsunomiya tsuritenjo, 1956)

Nakagawa Nobuo

Japan

80 min, B&W, Japanese (English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

A fairly straightforward chambara with a possibly supernatural twist at the very end, this film would hardly be worth watching if it weren't helmed by Nakagawa. As it is, the assured direction combined with some pretty good story-telling skills keep matters interesting enough to perhaps warrant repeated viewings.

Swiss-army knife. Good for sushi too	Sir, you're treading on my doormat

Sometime after Tokugawa Iemitsu came to power (1623), the disgruntled daimyo at Utsunomiya fief and his chamberlain Kawamura (Egawa Ureo) are plotting to assassinate the shogun on his way to the Toshogu Temple at Nikko (where Iemitsu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and Iemitsu's grandfather, was buried). The plot is somewhat complex, seeing that it involves the construction of a false suspended ceiling, piling huge stone blocks on it, and then dropping everything on Iemitsu's head during the evening festivities. To keep the matter secret, the usual heartless killing of everyone involved in the construction is being contemplated.

Darling, say 'please' to the nice man!	Samurai siesta

The Tokugawa, however, are no dummies, and the shogun has dispatched a couple of spies to make sure everything's kosher with his accommodations. This time, it's the deadly samurai Ryutaro (Ogasawara Ryuzaburo) who has the unfortunate tendency to get side-tracked by local affairs, especially when they include pretty ladies in some distress or other. On account of his good looks and steely gaze, he is also frequently the object of substantial attention by said ladies, which cannot be very good for an undercover agent. This time, however, his penchant for meddling actually works in his favor when he stumbles across the plot to kill his master.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!	The classic bridge encounter

Ostensibly a tough jidai-geki, the film is really a melodrama about the love lives (and sometimes deaths) of unremarkable and inconsequential locals: carpenters, servers, peasants, merchants, and even a hired assassin, all of whom get together to form triangles, quadrangles, and dodecahedrons of complicated relationships. Briefly, Shino (played by the absolutely lovely Tsukushi Akemi) is a wild girl who lives in the mountains with her aging stone-cutter grandfather. She is fierce, at least that's what we are led to believe when the film opens with her riding (where would a peasant get a horse?) through the wind-swept open landscape only to stop by a river for a quick snack in the form of a bird she kills in flight with a hairpin.

Cross-class conspiracy	Sake, women, and katana!

Next, there's Ryutaro who just happens to be sitting by the river and witness this rather abrupt meal preparation technique. The two glare at each other, she throws a couple of stones in his general direction, and the makings of a true love story are in evidence. Despite being smitten with the savage beauty (who, by the way, turns out to be like warm butter under Ryutaro manly gaze), the samurai is on a mission, which means he is forced to spend his time lounging at an inn, engage in some dalliance with a pretty server by the name of Nobu (Touyama Sachiko), all in the name of god and country (or, rather shogun and duty). When he is not rescuing Nobu from the unwarranted advances of an obnoxious local thug, he is busy swilling sake by the gallon.

Gratuitous shot of Tsukushi Akemi	The first of many dozens of fodder extras

I would be remiss not to mention Tenzen (Tamba Tetsuro), who is not making any friends around the town. This is not just on account of his face mask which makes him look like a semi-camouflaged ninja but because of his decidedly unfriendly tendency to kill people for hire. As far as assassins go, however, he is not in top form, or at least that's what it looks like when he tries to off Ryutaro on several occasions but only manages to spill some bamboo shoots and drop the opponent into a river. At least he does murder several other people, including one of the pretty ladies in love with Ruytaro, which would have pissed off any samurai except this one gets off the hook to pursue his affair with Shino.

Tamba's mean mercenary	Till death and/or duty do us part

If that's confusing, there's more. Another pretty girl is in love with a carpenter by the name of Yoshichi (Sugiyama Hirotaro). Unfortunately, she is being pursued by the evil chamberlain who is also in cahoots with the no less evil (and scheming) rich merchant Kagiya (Mishima Masao). The latter is not only in charge of kidnapping young ladies for the chamberlain's perusal but also of organizing the building of the secret ceiling, dispatching shogun's spies to meet Hachiman, and arranging the labor as well as untimely deaths of many a wood-worker. Naturally, our gallant undercover agent will get himself so involved in the protection racket that he will actually reveal his identity to the opponents (apparently only a spy for the shogunate would dare rescue a damsel). To make matters somewhat more complicated, Tenzen seems to have fallen for the same girl too.

Your check bounced	Obligatory second shot of Tsukushi Akemi

Whew! Not a bad story for an 80 minute film. In fact, keeping track of the multitudinous cast would occupy the viewer for at least half an hour. Nakagawa manages to intertwine the stories with some degree of credibility, however, despite the several chance encounters to drive the plot on occasion. We do get some fine fighting scenes although the stylization is typical of swordfights of the era: this is no Zatoichi, and most definitely this is no Lone Wolf and Cub. In other words, there is a lot of slashing but no blood, no severed limbs flying in all directions, and no ghastly gashes to grace the faces of the fallen opponents. Instead, it's all quite surgical and without any collateral damage. More like a dance than a slaughter, actually. In this, Nakagawa is true to the form of his time.

This carpenter - no second chances	The lattice-crossed lovers

Being directed so early after the war, the influence of American censors is not as evident as one might think. Sure, there is no glorification of Japan's feudal militaristic past, but Iemitsu is portrayed as a valiant shogun worthy of admiration (he performs a dance under the ceiling, fully aware of an impending assassination attempt), which is very different from his usual reputation of a ruthless villain (when he's not suppressing rebellions and murdering Christians by the truckload, he is ordering his brother to commit suicide and shutting off Japan from the world). Nakagawa, however, is ambivalent about the value of bushido: on one hand, there's the painfully honorable Ryutaro but on the other there is the strangely intense Tenzen. And the grasping merchant Kagiya is fully in compliance with the stereotype: he would stop at nothing to add a few gold coins to his collection. This includes throwing kittens into a well. Bastard.

The merchant and the stray ghost	The wages of sin is lots of money

Nakagawa's fine touch is already in evidence throughout: the compositions are inspired. In addition to the occasional odd angle (e.g., when conspirators meet at the construction site), there is the moody lighting when the vengeful ghost of Toemon (Misaki Yoji) appears to exact justice which otherwise would have been unattainable. Although the kaidan element is quite peripheral, some of the details will show up in Nakagawa's later acclaimed horror films: the well, the pitcher spilling water, the cats (of course!), the play of shadows, the mistaken identity, the disfigured faces, and the moaning groaning spirits of the wrongly murdered coming back to cause all sorts of grief to the villains. Nakagawa, of course, was no newbie (this is something like his sixtieth film), and his direction is what keeps an otherwise unremarkable story going.

Shogun Iemitsu's last dance	Obligatory third shot of Tsukushi Akemi

I have a bootlegged copy of the Beam DVD. The film is presented in the Academy OAR but its glorious black and white is marred by a low-contrast transfer that makes shadows at best 18% gray. (Do not be fooled by the screencaps, I Photoshopped the levels). The picture appears soft and is unstable on occasion (this may be an artifact of the compression or it may be 1950s technology, who knows). Some frames also lose focus. The sole audio track is a monoaural Japanese, which is serviceable, if nothing spectacular. The optional English subtitles are bright, easy to read, and free of spelling errors. All of the menus are in Japanese, and there are no extras save for what I think are production notes, also in Japanese. Overall, a decent if not especially remarkable disc of a decent if not especially remarkable film.

July 6, 2006