In the solitary extra of Criterion’s new Blu-ray of 1964’s Pale Flower, Masahiro Shinoda says that his writers wanted to make something fresh, something Shochiku studio wasn’t doing. In the 1960s, Yakuza cinema was full of rough boys driven by anger and anachronistic musical numbers. The leading men were manly men who had abusive and borderline rapey relationships with their love interests who kept rushing back to their men violent men, no matter what they did. Even long acknowledged classics like Branded to Kill couldn’t escape this fate, nor could directors as acclaimed as Kinji Fukasaku. Contrary to the image of Japanese cinema of the 1960s new wave being free and liberal, much of it was formally and narratively strict, especially the crime genre. Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower, as the documentary states, was different.

Inspired by classic noir, events follow Muraki (Ryō Ikebe) as he is fresh out of prison after killing a man. With this newfound freedom: he visits old friends, goes bowling, bets on horses or spends time in gambling dens playing Chō-han. That’s his meagre existence until he meets Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a mysterious young woman who cuts an odd image in the male-dominated gambling rooms of inner-city Japan; she is the titular pale flower. While mysterious and glamorous, she is his double in the sense that she is gambling to feel something, anything. Together, the two spark some purpose back into their lives, even if only fleeting. This is no sexual relationship; the only thing the pair do besides gamble is drive through the vacant night streets in her convertible. Besides, Muraki already has a girl in a perfectly healthy (non-violent) relationship, albeit one where he constantly asks her to leave whenever a chance at normality presents itself. He knows this is no life for anyone to lead or aspire to.

Not just Japanese crime movies of the 1960s – whether they be from the Shichoku, Toho, Nikkatsu, or America – Pale Flower cuts a solitary image when sat beside most of its genre bedfellows. Spare existentialism, masquerading as crime cinema – that is what Shinoda and writers, Shintarō Ishihara & Masaru Baba, helmed. Action is key to the traditional genre, whether that comes in car chases or violence, there’s none of that here. Not in the way you’d expect. There are two action scenes: one sees a murder attempt in public stopped and bum-rushed out of the building. The other is exquisitely scored by classical music and undercut by longing gazes, giving what would traditionally be a third act blowout a feeling of doomed futility. All told, it’s a beautiful scene. And the scene in the prison that follows is the perfect finale.

Pale Flower is a beautiful film all-in. Its cinematography has a spare, high contrast black and white that gives it a feel of 1940s American Noir. Shinoda’s regular cinematographer, Masao Kosugi (Samurai Spy, Killers on Parade, Assassination and more), with the art direction team & set decorators elevate this beyond the “right black & white”. These events could happily be taking place in one of America’s many tone-deaf inner-city Asian suburbs instead of its actual shooting locations, Tokyo and Yokohoma. When discussing Japanese noir as a collective of films, Shinoda shot with a more classical ideology than his peers prefered – Seijun Suzuki included. They were openly inspired by the stylised French New Wave with its high fashion and laid back cool, Kosugi’s lens gives it a feeling as if the film had been discovered long lost in an archive somewhere.

The word Yakuza has many connotations in pop culture, between the extreme violence of Takashi Miike and co’s late 1990s Gangster Films and the Ryu Ga Gotoku videogames formerly fronted by Kiryu Kazuma – expectations are of soap opera drama and extreme violence. If crime families stretched up and down Japan behaved like their romanticised visions, the country would be on fire. All the time. Reality is much more subtle. Yes, the tattoos are real, as are many of the tropes – instead, the Yakuza are closer to legitimate business clans, albeit with a questionable relationship with the law. Still, they do little to draw outside attention to themselves. It’s how they still exist to this day. That is the world of Pale Flower, which provides yet another difference to a subgenre defined by testosterone, rolling Rs and all the bloodshed.

Humility and consciously contrarian are the two terms that define Criterion UK’s latest release. Shinoda helmed a beautifully shot and humbly acted character drama in what is a brazenly universal watch. No prior experience of Yakuza or Gangster cinema is necessary for this one, there’s also a pretty cool dream sequence in the middle act too. This is a simple story of a man trying to find a new purpose – something that we can all relate to, especially in this age of the ‘great resignation’. However, if you are looking for a pureblood action crime movie, while it may feel like a breath of fresh air for many, for others it may stray towards the dreaded B-word. That’s right, boring. Pale Flower is the sort of film that’d have some leaving the cinema in raptures where others make will make the haughty claim, “that was the worst film I’ve ever seen”.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – PALE FLOWER