★★★I Am Waiting is the first movie I’ve watched from the Criterion Eclipse series Nikkatsu Noir, and it’s a discovery for me. From the collection notes, I understood that the Nikkatsu studio did a series of movies that use the vocabulary of noir, and that the films had some success.
My interest here was in what elements of noir worked in these popular culture films and what elements weren’t deemed appropriate. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that some cultural structures didn’t make the transfer but that the Kurahara appropriated the noir visual style well.
In fact, a big source of my pleasure in this film was seeing all the familiar noir style in a Japanese context. There are lots of low camera shots with large shadows thrown behind the characters, and the opening looks like it could have been done by John Huston with the characters filmed from behind and with the camera following a pair of shoes from one pool of street light to the next, going into darkness between the pools. We don’t even see the faces of the characters until several shots into the movie. And the dark, vaguely threatening dockside setting could be from any noir.
Thematically, I Am Waiting picks up on a few familiar noir ideas. The movie concerns the underworld, and it’s not immediately clear who the criminals are or even what they’ve done. To this extent, Kurahara addresses classic noir concerns. But this Japanese noir goes off the trail in two, perhaps culturally significant ways. First, I was surprised to find that the police weren’t involved in the hero’s quest for resolution; I’m used to seeing the police as bumbling if not flat-out corrupt in noir, but here they don’t do anything except, at one small juncture, provide some info. No social commentary on the police in this film.
Then second variation concerns the woman in the hero’s life. I’m used to a femme fatale in noir, the woman who brings about the destruction of the hero. Here, however, Saeko actually aids the hero, providing him with the info he needs and helping him accomplish his goals. I kept expecting some kind of reversal in her character, but that never happened. Instead, she enables Joji to realize his goal with no double-cross. It’s interesting to me that I Am Waiting had no room for the misogyny of noir; perhaps women’s subservient role in Japanese culture worked against their bringing down the hero.
I Am Waiting is a fun movie. When it uses obvious noir style flourishes, it puts them with Japanese faces and Japanese settings, which highlights the style even more than when we see it in American films. And there are points when Kurahara even extends the style, like when Joji walks beside a chain-link fence with the links running in shadows on his back, an effect I’m more used to seeing with Venetian blind shadows. And it’s fun seeing what cultural element transfer and don’t in this Japanese noir. It was unique seeing the femme fatale who wasn’t, in fact, fatale. I’m looking forward to others in the collection.
