1138 REPORT CARD: 9/10 (A) Top of the class!
Killing has never been so beautiful.
Should you see this movie? If it were me, and it usually is, I would walk over broken glass just to stand in the shadow of this movie…it’s that good! Watch it!
A silver flash across the screen is followed by a plume of bright red blood feathering through the air. Another flash and another red feather plumes through the air. There is often little dialogue needed, but we are treated to many deep, painful growls of death. The flash of the sword and the blood provides more than enough narration to know what is happening. Death is happening and audiences are gripped by it.
Lady Snowblood (1973) has long been regarded as a seminal film in the ‘Chambara’
Sex from the West!
(sword fighting) genre. The film influenced Tarantino to make Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 and Lady Snowblood’s ghost is present in spirit throughout both of Tarantino’s film epics. While Lady Snowblood (1973) explores in a small way, the relationship of East meeting West, Kill Bill (2003) & (2004) reverses the dichotomy and explores West Meeting East; but neither Lady Snowblood (1973) or Tarantino’s film are about politics. Snowblood simply uses political references to temporally locate the film much the same way Peckinpah used the motorcar in The Wild Bunch (1969). As the Chambara genre is traditional set between 1600 and 1868 we might anticipate the West making an appearance to some extent. But make no mistake, Lady Snowblood (1973) is about vengeance, and there will definitely be blood! There will be a ballet of blood!
East meets West and West meets East
Just as Tarantino pays homage to Lady Snowblood (1973), so too can we see references to the Western genre in Toshiya Fujita’s two Lady Snowblood films. In the first, there is an opening sequence which freezes the frame on each of the villains’ faces, highlighting their names. We know from the outset that these gangsters’ cards are well and truly marked. This in many ways mirrors Sergio Leone’s opening sequence from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) where the faces of Wallach, Eastwood, and Van Cleef are all famously frozen for the audience to
The Steven Segal of Samurai
ponder their fate. The Western references are not wasted in Lady Snowblood (1973). The narrative of The Searchers (1956), Blue (1968), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) all share a common bond: The seeking of vengeance for what was lost in the past. As with all these Western films, Yuki Kashima’s (Meiko Kaji) vengeance is long awaited and all consuming.
Kashima is a girl born to bring blood, pain and death to the group of four whose faces are frozen at the start of the film; the four murdered the mother’s husband and after she swore to kill them, brought about her imprisonment. After becoming pregnant in prison, the ‘child of the netherworld’ is born and is tasked with the sole purpose of seeking the mother’s vengeance. Anyone who stands in her way will see their own blood plume in front of them.
Large Laundry Bills
Flash backs show us a back story, yet the back story rightly remains only the stage where the Chambara, the sword fighting, takes place. It’s the now that is important, it’s the beauty and elegance of the swordswoman as she slices her way to completeness that keeps our eyes wide open and focussed on the screen.
Based on four Manga novels by Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura, we expect the film to be brutal and violent, and yet, however brutal and violent it actually is, the violence is not gratuitous, it is clinical and
Too sexy by half!
professional, it is a poetic dance of death. Villains are dispatched without mercy, yet the innocent are shown kindness. The daughter of one soon to be painfully killed villain is offered sanctuary, should she ever find herself alone! Minutes later she is orphaned. The violence is stylised, even dignified, fight sequences are a dance of gore and grace. Those who oppose Kashima seems slow and without skill; their skills are deemphasised in order to emphasise those of Kashima. Imagine The Matrix meets Kurosawa! The image of the repressed and violated
Whose up for a snowball fight?
woman becomes that of an independent warrior; one to be respected for her abilities and skills and one not to be taken advantage of. Yet for all the feminist ticker tape interpretation, Kashima remains dignified and pure, beautiful and extremely desirable: The Geisha warrior, polite, and deadly.
The film is skilfully directed by Toshiya Fujita who is able to get the most out of Kaji’s performance; it is subtle, and graceful, yet raw and ruthless. The Japanese doll totters on a journey to her own oblivion. What more could we expect from a child born of the netherworld than blood, pain and good manners.
Kino 1138 