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Underworld Beauty
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (16th February 2025). |
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The Film
 Released from prison after a three year sentence for a jewelry store robbery, Miyamoto (Outlaw Gangster VIP's Michitarô Mizushima) retrieves a pair of stashed diamonds and goes to boss Ôyone (Stray Dog's Shinsuke Ashida) to make a sale, intending to give the money to Mihara (Tokyo Story's Tôru Abe) who lost a leg in the heist and has been running an Oden stall ever since to support himself and his sister Akiko (Take Aim at the Police Van's Mari Shiraki) who is going down a bad path, playing "bib sis" to a group of schoolgirls for a cut and modeling nude for mannequin-maker Akita (Bullet Train's Hiroshi Kondô) who has artistic ambitions. Ôyone agrees to arrange the sale to an American buyer and they meet on a rooftop. When a group of masked robbers crash the exchange, Mihara swallows the diamonds and jumps off the roof and winds up in the hospital. Ôyone, his second-in-command Ôsawa (Story of a Prostitute's Kaku Takashina), and his men camp in the restaurant across the street, waiting for Inspector Watababe (Submersion of Japan's Hideaki Nitani) to stop snooping around, knowing they have to get to the diamonds before an autopsy or cremation. Mihara, on the other hand, is content to let things lie as he intended to give the diamonds to his friend one way or the other, and instead focuses on his assumed obligation to set Akiko straight. Akita accompanies Akiko to claim the body and sees his own chance to profit when mourning Akiko goes out to drink and party with American sailors and arranges to split the sale of the diamonds with Ôyone. Miyamoto has become a thorn in Akiko's side. When he discovers Akita's and Ôyone's dirty deal, he decides Akiko should be the rightful owner of the diamonds and sets about trying to get them back. Seijun Suzuki's seventh film for Nikkatsu and his first in scope, Underworld Beauty has a rather conventional story and is nowhere near as outrageously stylized as the later Nikkatsu noir films that would get him fired, however, it is quite entertaining and shows Suzuki already subverting conventions. While Mizushima's Miyamoto is the strong, quiet type, he is much cooler and casual even at his most vengeful which allows Shiraki's Akiko to be the focus of the film while he is still the lead. Akiko is naive but not stupid, self-possessed and learns from her mistakes, thrown for a loop with her brother's death and multiple betrayals and uninhibited in her display of emotions and venting but unwilling to let anyone else bring her down. She is infatuated with Akita who cultivates an intellectual, artistic persona but really is just a thug – Suzuki would more sympathetically depict such intellectually-ambitious young men who feel the deck is stacked against them in the films he did for Nikkatsu's youth genre in between this and his better-known output – falling apart when confronted by Miyamoto and quickly crumbling and groveling when his half-assed attempts to charm Akiko when he believes she has the jewels. Akiko does not so much fall for him as believe him pathetic enough for her to have the upper hand but not so vile as to betray her again. She discovers that the only people who have her best interests at heart are the least rotten of the criminal class and Inspector Watanabe who is ignorant of most of the goings on, arriving at the scene throughout the film on police business rather than intuition. In the end, the experience puts Miyamoto firmly on the straight and narrow while even without the material possibilities of the diamonds seems opened up to the possibilities of life beyond her previously narrow range of pleasure-seeking in a manner more ambiguous than that of some of the youths of Suzuki's lighter studio fare. 
Video
Unreleased theatrically in the U.S. or the U.K., Underworld Beauty's first widely accessible English-friendly release was from former Criterion distributor Home Vision – just after they were acquired by Image Entertainment – with a DVD in 2004. Radiance Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.39:1 widescreen Blu-ray – also available in the U.K. comes from a "new 4K restoration of the film by Nikkatsu Corporation" which was much need looking at the DVD. Shot in sometimes harsh noir-ish lighting, the DVD transfers whites were often blown out – making Shiraki's white brassiere blend into her skin – and while the film is set in gritty environments, the new master reveals more textures and a slicker studio look that extends beyond the actual sets to the location work with scenes like the (possibly slightly overexposed) beach stroll following Akiko's stint in jail giving a sense of production value backdrop where once the sea, sky, and distant buildings bleached out of readability. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track in which all of the dialogue is post-synched and as clear as the effects and scoring – of which there are a number of music stings that seem melodramatic here but would be "camp" in later Suzuki films – while the optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
Extras start off with a new interview with critic Mizuki Kodama (14:44) who discusses the ways Suzuki subverts the genre requirements of Nikkatsu with this film – which reunited Mizushima and Shiraki from Suzuki's previous effort The Naked Woman and the Gun (Kodoma also noting that Nikkatsu used "naked" and "beauty" along with other such buzzwords regularly – with Mizushima's male lead technically driving the action but being a relatively stationary figure while danger Shiraki never stops moving or talking, making Miyamoto seem more "demure" in comparison. She also notes the inverting of the genders in Suzuki's last film Pistol Opera as a quasi-remake of Branded to Kill and the likelihood that the latter required a male lead before the later trend of girls and guns. Kodama also proposes a reassessment of queerness in Suzuki's filmography in the context of aromanticism and asexuality, also speculating on the presence of mannequins here and throughout Suzuki's filmography as a comment on sexuality. A theatrical trailer (3:15) for the film is also included.  The major extra of the disc is Love Letter (39:28), a 1959 film by Suzuki in which nightclub pianist Kozue (Hisako Tsukuba) pines for Masao (Red Peony Gambler's Kyôsuke Machida), a ranger she met in the mountains two years before. Separated by her work and his illness, they have only communicated through letters which are becoming less frequent. Kozue resists the romantic overtures of nightclub singer Fukui (Frank Nagai) who suggests she is in love with the letters themselves and that she should visit Masao to see if she really does feel the way she did before. When a letter from Masao finally arrives in which he apparently wants to end things, Kozue travels to the mountains. Masao seems not only reticent to see her but actually afraid, becoming upset when she tries to relive their memories together. Going to his cabin, she discovers that he has seemingly given up music – the sheet music is put away and the music box she gifted him is covered in dust – and taken up photography. More suspiciously, he holds his camera with his right hand where once before he aimed his rifle with his left. Love Story seems rather atypical of Suzuki the auteur in everything but its melodrama, and that melodrama itself becomes so cloying as to be irritating until one listens to the accompanying audio commentary by Suzuki biographer William Carroll in which he explains that the film belonged to a Nikkatsu B-picture genre of "ballad films" built around a popular song (in this case, the theme song performed by Nagai). He points out that themes of doubles, identity, ghosts, and deception actually do crop up through Suzuki's filmography, citing the little-seen-in-the-west horror television piece A Mummy's Love and the "Taisho Trilogy" film Zigeunerweisen. The film's theatrical trailer (2:54) is also included. 
Packaging
The disc comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow while this first limited edition of 3,000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings, and including a booklet featuring new writing by critic Claudia Siefen-Leitich – which is less about the story than how the themes are conveyed through the innovative for the time anamorphic widesceen frame, lighting, and "imagined" colors represented in monochrome shades – and an archival review of the film by Seizo Okada.
Overall
Seijun Suzuki's first scope film Underworld Beauty seems more conventional within the generic conventions of Nikkatsu noir but already shows him playing with and subverting them, anticipating his later more outlandish works that eventually got him fired from Nikkatsu.
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