This film is a black-and-white, widescreen romp in noir…and a lot of fun. While not as over-the-top stylistically as I Am Waiting, Rusty Knife still has noir elements like smoke-filled police offices and a camera that tracks someone’s legs while they are walking. And this film even opens with a scene replete with black, late-50s police cars. It’s easy to see the American noir influences behind it.
Rusty Knife also brings in the noir staple of corrupt police, a noir element I missed in I Am Waiting. While most of the police here are honest, corruption in law enforcement plays some role in how the action happens, and the corruption in the burgeoning economic development permeates many social levels and institutions, from the government though the police and on to the mob. But the police corruption is only one part of the big stakes here – the well-being of the entire society is at risk. We see from the opening crowd scenes that everyone is hurting and that cleaning up the pervasive crime will make the city a better a place to live. Both the prosecutor and our hero Tachibana say as much during the film. The corruption in society at large is pretty common in American noir, though I don’t recall seeing the noir hero as the savior of society. He is usually pressed just to get himself out of the situation.
I also find the bitterness and loss in Rusty Knife to be appropriate for noir. Tachibana endures one crushing blow after another. He discovers his main flaw – his lack of control – but Rusty Knife condemns him to continually fail, to continually lose control of himself and to continually regret it. And he discovers that he’s made a significant error in judgment, having avenged himself on an innocent man. And then he loses his last, best friend. By the end of the film, Tachibana is a lone, maimed, flawed hero walking off alone. It’s a good, existential, noir conclusion, even after the hero has saved society.
I found it hard not to think of French New Wave in some of the scenes here, though Rusty Knife predates Breathless by a couple of years. There is cool fashion here, a straight-ahead soundtrack, and a great scene with a couple careening through the streets on a motorcycle with the wind blowing, them shouting and the camera waving from building top to building top like in Dassin's Rififi. It’s a short scene, but one full of the promise of what is to come.
The story structure is not what you’d expect in a classic Hollywood story either. It looks forward. Through most of Rusty Knife, the story is focused on the Tachibana/Katsumata conflict, but when that’s resolved 75% of the way through, the focus shifts to Tachibana and Keiko's uncle. While there is plenty of obvious foreshadowing about the uncle, it’s not classic Hollywood to lose a main character and move to a different focus ¾ through the movie.
Rusty Knife is pop entertainment, but there’s a lot of pleasure to be had from the social context and even from the narrative itself. I’m even turning into a fan of Yujiro Ishihara, who is almost a Japanese Alan Delon at this point. This film is another worthwhile component of the Nikkatsu Noir Eclipse collection.
