A Fugitive from the Past [dir. Tomu Uchida]

It is no mean feat that the three films of Tomu Uchida that I have thus far seen - Bloody Spear at Mt Fuji (1955), The Mad Fox (1962) and A Fugitive from the Past (1965) - are so different from each other they may have as well been made by different people. But it is perhaps this absence of an obvious signature style that has made Uchida, widely acclaimed in his home country, a less recognized name internationally than vintage Japanese cinema's holy triumvirate of Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi. But his achievement in each of these films, and his versatility of craft across them, is significant enough to consider Uchida their creative equal.

Bloody Spear... is related in spirit to Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri in its realistic, unflinching look at the hypocrisies of the Samurai code, while The Mad Fox is a magical fable unraveled as a colorful theatrical tableau. Fugitive..., considered Uchida's magnum opus, has been repeatedly hailed as one of the greatest Japanese films of all time. At the outset its 3-hour running time may be daunting, but what Uchida has done is to divide the film into 3 roughly equal-sized narrative arcs.

In the first, set in 1947, a man called Takichi Inukai (Rentaro Mikuni) is fleeing with 2 others from the scene of a crime in provincial Hokkaido. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by a typhoon disaster, they steal a boat and escape to a neighboring island. Later we see Takichi alone, avoiding notice as he makes his way through the countryside. While stealing food he espies a strange seance ritual conducted by a blind old woman. Jumping onto a makeshift country train later, he meets a girl from the seance. The girl Yae (Sachiko Hidari) seems inordinately happy to have made his acquaintance, sharing her food and even dragging him over to her "place". We learn that she's a prostitute (this is from the time when prostitution was not yet illegal in Japan). With a somewhat disturbing familiarity, Yae alternately provokes and submits to Takichi, and they end up having a passionate roll in bed. The next day Takichi leaves abruptly, leaving Yae a generous sum of money. She also retains a clipped fingernail of his as a souvenir of her mysterious benefactor. This segment has a touch of film noir. There are the archetypes of the criminal and the whore - outcasts, but with an lining of human decency. Their hurried, almost needy romance is also a strong noir element. During this time we also see the efforts of Hokkaido detective Yumisaka (Junzaburō Ban) to track down Takichi and his associates. 

The next phase puts Takichi aside and makes Yae the fulcrum. When Yumisaka's investigation leads to Yae, she deliberately misleads him. Using the money Takichi left to repay her family debts, Yae heads off to Tokyo to find more 'honorable' work (as a serving girl). Later on adverse circumstances force her to return to prostitution. A large part of the second act is about Yae's life in the seamy side of Tokyo (shades of Shohei Imamura's Insect Woman, in which also Hidari played, but as a much more cynical and steel-willed character). Some of the critical writing on this film suggests that poor provincials from places like Hokkaido were looked down upon in class-conscious mainstream Japanese society; very few professional avenues were open to them.  After the decade that passes, even prostitution may no longer  be feasible on account of impending laws. During all this period, Yae's gratitude to Takichi never wanes. She continues to seek her savior, often talking to his fingernail as a proxy. Nearly a decade after their initial meeting she one day manages to locate Takichi. But when she meets him, he denies the previous identity and all knowledge of her. The encounter ends with a tragic double-crime. 

Fugitve...'s last arc takes another turn, becoming a procedural that harks back to 1963's High & Low (reviewed on this site HERE). The bodies of Yae and another man have been found, and it is soon apparent that they have been murdered. Takichi, in his guise of a philanthropic businessman, shrugs off any knowledge of the affair. But once Yae's origins are unearthed and the now-retired Yumisaka readily joins the hunt for the criminal that eluded him all through his career, the trail unmistakably leads to Takichi's door. What follows is a cat and mouse game between Takichi and the cops (led by Susumu Fujita, who'd played a similar part in High & Low). To know the whole truth, one must return to the original crime that started it all. Even apart from the procedural aspect, Fugitive shares the same humanist sentiment High & Low had. Remember the criminal's breakdown in the epilogue for that one? While not admitting to all the crimes (the film is ambivalent about his guilt), Takichi justifies his actions on the basis of the prejudice people of his standing must face when confronted by the law. The impartiality of justice is a myth: wealth and social class are what determine the justice one gets in this world.

Uchida's saga is not just a dry philosophical exercise. Technically also, Fugitive... is an accomplished film. The cinematography (Hanjiro Nakazawa) often reflects not just the environment, but the psychological states of the characters. 16mm footage blown up to 35mm is used to give a grainy newsreel quality to events. When exploring the minds of its characters, the film plays with the exposure of the celluloid stock, generating an otherworldly quality in the images. Uchida uses sound in interesting ways, often suppressing background noises purely to focus on specific elements of a scene. Isao Tomita's brooding Buddhist chant inspired score is also an integral component of the film's atmosphere. With all its achievements, Fugitive... unmistakably deserves to be counted among the world's "great" films and  Tomu Uchida is certainly to be respected as the driving force behind it.

A few words now on the blu-ray release from Arrow Video:

I owe Arrow a great debt for introducing me to Tomu Uchida's cinema with their releases of the films I'd mentioned at the start. This is another strong entry from the label that matches up to every  imaginable "criterion". The video presentation is not easy to judge per se on account of the very deliberate capture and processing techniques used. The blown up 16mm footage has a soft slightly un-focused look with loose grain. The solarized images obviously will not have top-notch contrast. That said, at least my amateur eyes cannot detect anything that appears to be outside of the film-maker's intent. The Japanese mono audio is strong, most noticeable in the Tomita soundtrack, which sounds full-bodied. There's a wonderful array of scholarly extras befitting the film's quality. Jasper Sharp gives an in-depth introduction to Uchida's career and the real-life influences on Fugitive... There is a selection of scene-specific commentaries from various film experts. These are not played as accompaniment to the main feature, but the clips are specifically curated to the commentaries, so they are more like video essays. The bitrate here is DVD-level, but that's perfectly okay. I appreciated all of them, except Earl Jackson's, which I thought was too pretentious and eager to be meaningful. There is also a lengthy feature trailer (which first lists all the acclaim the film has got) and an image gallery. I must talk about the booklet as well. It is a hearty 47 pages, of which more than 30 pages are text in the form of two substantial essays. I haven't completely read them, but I feel reasonably assured of a satisfactory experience.

Even if it had been offered as a barebones release, this film deserves your attention. In its current avatar it is a must-have for any discerning fan of vintage arthouse cinema.