Black River

A film set in postwar Japan. There is a neighbourhood built beside an American base. Landlords collect the rents, the black market runs and an economy turns on the base. Nishida is a university student. He moves into a boarding house there because it is cheap and meets Shizuko. A man named Joe lives in the same building. He is from the yakuza, does business with the base, knows everyone in the district and is used to taking what he wants. Joe wants Shizuko. She resists and then gives in; the life he offers looks better to her than the boarding house. Nishida does nothing. He sees, he knows and he does not interfere. What the film is interested in is not violence but standing by. Everyone in the neighbourhood watches what happens and nobody intervenes; the landlady's arithmetic is part of it. The narrative looks directly at Japan under occupation and criticises the economy of those years. Tatsuya Nakadai plays Joe; it is his first large part. Ineko Arima plays Shizuko and Fumio Watanabe plays Nishida. Masaki Kobayashi directed. An important production for anyone interested in the postwar period of Japanese cinema. Before you watch, know this: the film takes sexual violence as its direct subject and its register is suffocating.