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 Story of a Prostitute More at IMDbPro »Shunpu den (original title)

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10 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Suzuki is a master of the medium, 11 August 2005
10/10
Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

Most likely the closest Suzuki ever got to making a prestige film. It probably wasn't viewed as such at the time, as it was a remake of a movie called Escape at Dawn that was generally considered a classic at the time (it was scripted by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Senkichi Taniguchi in 1950). Story of a Prostitute seemed like a much more lurid version of the older film. Both were anti-war pictures, but Escape at Dawn was romantic and tragic. Story of a Prostitute is harsh and cynical. Its scenes are often comic, which clashes with the standard view of war. In an interview on the new Criterion disc, Suzuki, a veteran himself, says that he found a lot of black humor and absurdity in his wartime experience. All three of WWII-themed films I've seen from him, which cover the pre-war (Fighting Elegy), the actual war (Story of a Prostitute), and post-war (Gate of Flesh) periods all incorporate some level of absurd, black comedy. The three films actually make a good trilogy (the rest I've seen are all yakuza or crime films). Story of a Prostitute is a very powerful anti-war film, though it is lurid and not nearly as powerful as something like, say, Kobayashi's The Human Condition. Yumiko Nogawa, who also starred in Gate of Flesh, gives a fantastic performance. But it is, as usual, Suzuki's supreme visual skills – in black and white in this instance – that make the film a stunning and memorable experience. His artistic imagination in cinematographic matters is nearly unsurpassed in the entire realm of cinema.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
New Wave war melodrama, with a heart of style, 3 June 2009
9/10
Author: chaos-rampant from Greece

Presumably one of the "movies that didn't make sense" that led Nikkatsu Studios to promptly fire Suzuki after BRANDED TO KILL, in the process turning him into an icon of artistic defiance that inspired may, STORY OF A PROSTITUTE is at the same time a war melodrama, a rather conventional love story that you could see come out from Hollywood in the 50's, but also a Seijun Suzuki film. A genre director who slaved away from b-movie to b-movie working from scripts that had little difference from one to the next, Suzuki developed, out of artistic frustration with the trappings of cookie cutter studio film-making, an irreverent visual grammar which existed for its own pleasure. In his own way, perhaps unwittingly, he was making New Wave before most.

Here we find both facets of his work, a crowdpleasing genre film and a sumptuous celebration of a visual cinema.

But unlike stuff like TOKYO DRIFTER, or indeed Branded to Kill, films that often appeared to be little more than empty exercises in stylish bravura where the only reward possible for the viewer was a confirmation of Suzuki's bold, audacious approach, Story has a dramatic heart. The director approaches the love story between Mirakami, an orderly to an abusive adjutant who is brainwashed to docile acceptance of military authority, and Harumi, a passionate prostitute working a Japanese camp somewhere in Manchuria in the days of WWII, with sincerity and honesty.

In the same time he punctuates the main plot with set-pieces that truly dazzle with their inventiveness. Harumi running through a shellshocked battlefield to an injured Mirakami; Harumi's fantasy of Mirakami rushing in slow-motion through a white-washed scene to save her from the abusive officer. All this filmed in stark black and white, with fast tracking shots around walls and behind wooden panels, beautiful exterior shots of Manchurian landscapes which dwarf the figures walking them, intricate framing in depth and poignant symbolic touches that give an almost existential air to proceedings.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
A B-production triumphs over the A, 12 October 2005
10/10
Author: urashimaru2002 from San Francisco, CA

Based on a novel written by Tamura Taijiro, and is actually a remake of 1950 Toho film Escape at Dawn directed by Taniguchi Senkichi with stars Ikebe Ryo and Shirley Yamaguchi, director Suzuki Seijun transformed a Nikkatsu ready-made routine script with low budget and tight schedule into one of his finest arts. Without digressing from the script or the novel, he recreated his signature world that is abstractive and ideological. Even though this is a B-movie, or maybe because it is, Suzuki with the production designer Kimura Takeo displays fantastic backdrops using some painstaking techniques of visual effects, superb studio sets and location filming behind outstanding performances acted by Kawaji Tamio, Nogawa Yumiko and Tamagawa Isawo. Compare to the Escape that has altered some elements from the Tamura's original this Suzuki version is essentially true to it, therefore Suzuki version has quite important elements such as the prostitution in the Army, multiple stratum of knotty personae and complicated layers of grotesque psychological characterizations concomitant to their bizarre relationships all of that are omitted in the Taniguchi's "fine literary effort." Along with his sense of unique humor these deep feelings the film radiates might be inspired from his own war experiences as a soldier during the WW II and it could be said that, in this regard, some similarity might be in Samuel Fuller's, many of these films are also deeply affected by Fuller's own war experiences.

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10 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Interesting anti-militaristic story about love and power., 29 June 1999
7/10
Author: freakus from San Francisco, CA

Although it's not quite as satisfying as Suzuki's gangster films, I was drawn in by the power struggle for the loyalty of Mikami. Harumi (the prostitute) loves him and wants him to abandon his duty to imperial japan to run away with her. Narita (Mikami's commander) treats Mikami like a dog but knows he will never shirk his duties to the military. Eventually Mikami's foolish loyalty to the army results in disaster for himself, Harumi and even his battalion. Like "Gate of Flesh", this is also based on a novel by Tajiro Tamura.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
I really need to see the restored DVD, 1 December 2010
6/10
Author: Michael Neumann from United States

There's a strong indictment of Japanese militarism (and, by extension, male brutality towards women) in this melodramatic story of an army whore following the Emperor's troops into Manchuria. The strict code of military etiquette allows the long-suffering protagonist to serve enlisted men by day and only officers at night, one of whom (a sadistic, possessive martinet) becomes insanely jealous after she falls in love with a common foot soldier. The scenario often descends to histrionic overkill; at one point the heroine is seen running unscathed through a mortar and machine gun torn battlefield to be reunited with her lover, just before the two of them are captured by enemy troops. But director Seijun Suzuki compensates for the occasional over-plotting with some surprising stylistic tics and flourishes, although the ultimate effectiveness of the film has been sadly compromised by a deteriorated print, with often illegible subtitles. (Note: this was at a screening well before the advent of DVD technology, in Berkeley California back in the late 1980s)

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Articulates Taijiro Tamura's "nikutai bungaku", literature of the flesh, 29 November 2006
8/10
Author: kippikari from Chicago

Seijun Suzuki's portrayal of Taijiro Tamura's, "Shunpu den" articulates Tamura's philosophical notion that "nikutai koto ha subete da" (the body is all there is). Harumi attempts to flee the despair of her situation as a comfort woman in Manchuria by rejecting the ideological and the transcendental; notions that bind her future lover Mikami. Mikami, a solider for the Imperial Japanese army, despite his love of philosophy and ideas (in a time when outside thought was strictly forbidden), is bound by nationalistic virtues of honor and duty; virtues essential to the foundation of the Imperial Japanese ideologies kokutai (national polity) and tennosei (the emperor system).

Harumi, who wants to, "throw herself against as many bodies as possible", finds that she can only know others through the physical sensations of the body: physical pleasure, touch, and sex. Although she falls in love with Mikami, she is outraged by his devotion to the Imperial Will, which appears hypocritical. Consequently, this hypocrisy proves fatal for Mikami.

In the spirit of Tamura's philosophy, we are left with the notion that there is no honor in dying; that only in the struggles of life can one derive honor, and that nothing is more important than continuing one's existence.

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An artistic contrast of beauty and war!, 26 May 2006
10/10
Author: Ehsan Azar from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I was surprised to see only few comments for this movie! I found it a quite amusing and worth watching foreign film. There are some beautiful b/w scenes, and the contrast of love and war that remember me of Eisenstein's master pieces. I am fond of the movies which show some psychotic aspect of human being, and this movie looks so real in depicting a prostitute's mentality, one who has lost her lover before and tries to keep some one for her in this lonely world. As the title suggests, the film is really about Harumi (the prostitute) and the war is another story happening at the background, although the movie is considered as anti-militaristic.

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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Very Gripping, 23 August 2008
9/10
Author: crossbow0106 from United States

This film centers on Harumi (the great Yumiko Nogawa), who is a "comfort woman" who goes to the Manchurian Front in China during the war to service the men fighting there. From the beginning you know she has nothing left to lose. As you would expect, this movie has scenes which are pretty brutal, including violence and rape. However, Mr. Suzuki makes this film's pacing so superb, you can look beyond this and just keep watching to see what will happen next. Harumi's reactions and expressions in this film are amazing, Ms. Nogawa gives a performance of a lifetime. You understand her struggle, but more so you understand her heart. She falls in love and you know its no lie. You want her to have some measure of happiness in what is depicted here as a very cruel world. Not everyone can watch this of course, its violent and its a war picture. But this film had me spellbound to the last frame, and that is a ringing endorsement.

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2 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
An atypical Suzuki, 30 June 2003
8/10
Author: maisannes from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

***Mild spoilers***

A much different movie from Suzuki's frenzied free-jazz yakuza flicks. Here he conforms more closely with traditional storytelling, though not without a few "reality breaks." The beautiful b&w cinematography is a far cry from the grittiness of Branded to Kill or the gleeful colors of Tokyo Drifter. Also, there is a great deal of sentiment here, and a more direct treatment of Japanese honor themes.

The Suzuki touch is still there though. Plenty of violence and sexual tension. There is a playful special effect "tearing up" the bad-guy adjutant early on, and some jarring wish-fulfillment/fantasy sequences. I was most impressed by the camera placements and movements, especially in the third act. The heroine's mad dash through the war zone at the hour point could stand side-by-side with any director's battle scene proudly. I seriously doubt that Arthur Penn saw this movie before Bonnie and Clyde, but when you see the farewell shots of the two protagonists, you have to wonder....

8 out of 10

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1 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
can't disguise a B movie, 30 April 2009
2/10
Author: hendersonhall from United States

No, not perfectly awful (that would rate a 1), but bad enough. I can't understand all the ooh's and ah's about what's no more than B-movie trash. Some good lighting, well-composed frames (along with, sad to say, some overly artsy ones), and nice camera movement can't disguise a bad script. The good-girl-prostitute-in love is laughably unrealistic; her supposed motivation, set at the beginning, and her desire to have sex with just about everyone in revenge for the man who spurned her is ridiculous, as is her love for the one soldier who can't tolerate her; the villain's snarling is out of the most overacted silent films; and the patriotic soldier (I won't give away what happens to him) who is supposed to help convey an anti- war theme is clunky. Want anti-war? Try All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Cross of Iron! As for the title prostitute, it's the sort of nonsense men used to write about women, prostitutes and others; probably still do, but I no longer read it. The DVD's Japanese critic who talks about the film and director said that 90% is what the studio wanted from the director and 10% is the originality the director provided. I'll take his word for that, but 10% isn't enough to make gold from trash. Hmm. Maybe I should have given it a 1 after all.

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