Happy New Year and Happy New Radiance Films Release Day to all those who celebrate. After falling head over heels for Elegant Beast (1962), I was delighted to be jumping back into 60’s Japan for Radiance’s latest release I, The Executioner (1968), a neo-noir directed by former Akira Kurosawa protégée Tai Kato.
The film opens with serial killer Kawashima (Makoto Satō) brutally torturing a victim, forcing her to write down the names of four other women before he kills her. Kawashima begins to work his way through the list, viciously assaulting and murdering these women one-by-one, with the police always a few steps behind and unable to work out the connection between victims.. They finally make a breakthrough when they link the victims to a seemingly unrelated, previously closed-case of a teenager’s suicide, but the surviving women on the list are reluctant to reveal why they suspect they’re being targeted. The film unravels in shocking fashion, examining the darkest depths of human nature.
The violence in I, The Executioner is unflinching and uncomfortable, often accentuated by Kato’s choice to not score these scenes — every scream, every breath, every struggling sound punctuates the surrounding silence — it is gut-wrenching to experience. For a director known more widely for his Yakuza films, Kato quells any potential misinterpretation of the movie you’re about to watch. The opening torture sequence announces that the violence in this film is not entertaining, it is appropriately hard to watch. There’s a number of particularly bold choices Kato makes within the first five minutes, including a sickening, dizzying use of overlapping that sent shivers down my spine.
This attention to detail accentuates the feeling of claustrophobia in I, The Executioner because if you’re not trapped in an extreme close-up with a character, you’re trapped alongside a character within their environment.
The film follows in the footsteps of M, Psycho and Peeping Tom in the way it positions a serial killer as the main character. Kato challenges our expectations of Kawashima by finding new depths to his character through slowly revealing the motivation for his crimes. Kato’s control of tone is exemplary, constructing an engaging mystery that balances intrigue, horror and solemn, soul-searching that gives the film a heavy emotional weight. What is particularly striking about the tonal balance is that I, The Executioner is also somewhat reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Melville in the way Kato stylistically shoots the police procedural elements and the way his characters move through metropolitan spaces, occasionally underpinned by a breezy jazz score.
Radiance’s restoration is incredible, showcasing Keiji Maruyama’s stunning black and white cinematography in all its glory. This is a film of stark, memorable images and I was struck by the way Kato and Maruyama use the 2:35 aspect ratio to make I, The Executioner overwhelmingly claustrophobic. They utilise extreme close-ups in cramped interior locations to make violence and threat feel inescapable. While the content can be hard to watch, it’s easy to sit in awe of the gorgeous imagery as Kato flawlessly weaves together beautiful wides, eye-catching low angles and high contrast flashbacks. In the Special Features, filmmaker Kenta Fukasaku points out that those aesthetically-pleasing low angles are a signature of Kato’s work and in order to incorporate them into his films, his art directors had to build ceilings into their sets. This attention to detail accentuates the feeling of claustrophobia in I, The Executioner because if you’re not trapped in an extreme close-up with a character, you’re trapped alongside a character within their environment.
As ever, I feel privileged to be able to discover a new filmmaker by watching one of their films lovingly restored and in the best available quality. The team at Radiance are clearly passionate about sharing Tai Kato’s films with a wider audience. They are publishing Tai Kato by Tom Mes, the first extended writing on the director, and are releasing another one of his films, By A Man’s Face You Shall Know Him, as a Blu Ray World Premiere in February. I, The Executioner is an excellent introduction to the work of Kato and I am now hungry to dive in and learn more about an overlooked genre master.
As well as the previously mentioned appraisal of Kato by Kenta Fukasaku, the Special Features also includes an informative history of Japanese serial killer films by Jim Harper and Tom Mes that dates back to 1899.
I the Executioner is out on Radiance Films Blu-Ray
