Actor · Director · Screenwriter · Producer · 1933–1997

Jūzō Itami

4: briefs
13:00: average
52 min: in total

On film.briefs4

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

Toshiya Fujita · 1974

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), directed by Toshiya Fujita, is the second film in the Lady Snowblood series — but a deliberate departure from its manga source and predecessor. Set in late-Meiji Japan, it follows Yuki Kashima (Meiko Kaji) as she infiltrates the household of anarchist Ransui Tokunaga (Jūzō Itami) under orders from the Secret Police. With restrained performances, muted cinematography by Tatsuo Suzuki and Masaki Tamura, and a script that favours implication over exposition, the film explores coercion, ideological uncertainty, and the quiet violence of bureaucratic control. Though structurally uneven and thematically opaque in places, it remains a precise, unsentimental study in moral suspension.

13:00

Tampopo

Jūzō Itami · 1985

Tampopo (1985), written and directed by Jūzō Itami, follows a widowed ramen-shop owner mentored by a trucker in her quest for culinary excellence. Framed as a 'noodle western', it interweaves this central story with vignettes exploring food, class, and desire across 1980s Tokyo. Shot on location with natural light by Masaki Tamura and edited by Akira Suzuki, it favours observation over exposition, craft over climax, and quiet resonance over narrative resolution.

13:00

The Funeral

Jūzō Itami · 1984

Jūzō Itami’s 1984 debut follows a Tokyo family preparing for a traditional Japanese funeral over three days. With Tsutomu Yamazaki and Nobuko Miyamoto, it observes ritual, grief and social performance with quiet precision — finding comedy not in mockery but in the stubborn persistence of form amid loss.

13:00

The Makioka Sisters

Kon Ichikawa · 1983

Kon Ichikawa’s 1983 adaptation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel follows the Makioka sisters — Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko, and Taeko — as they navigate marriage negotiations, familial duty, and quiet personal rebellion in pre-war Osaka and Kyoto. Shot with deliberate stillness and seasonal precision, the film prioritises atmosphere over plot, restraint over revelation, and social texture over psychological exposition. Its power lies in accumulation: in glances, silences, and the slow erosion of old hierarchies. Not for those seeking narrative urgency, but essential for viewers attuned to the eloquence of the unsaid.