Zero Focus (1961) User Reviews

Snowy Hitchcockian thriller

[Prof-Hieronymos-Grost · 8/10 · 8 September 2008]

Teiko Uhara is a dowdy young woman delighted at finally catching the man of her dreams, Kenichi, after a whirlwind romance her and her new man marry. As Kenichi has just received another big promotion in work, he is called away immediately before they can have a proper honeymoon, he promises to be back in a few days. The days pass and there is no sign of her husband returning, Teiko contacts her husbands employers, who say he has already left for home some time previously. Teiko begins to worry for her husbands safety and decides to travel north to Kanazawa to track him down.

Zero Focus is very taut thriller, that just screams of Hitchcock, the plot, the noirish visuals and even the score would all be very much at home in Hitch's repertoire. Nomura pieces together a convoluted script into a mesmerizing tale of hidden identities, murder and prostitution from which Teiko cannot escape. With only a couple of photos from her husbands belongings to go on, Teiko's investigation takes her into the snowy wastelands of the north, a slightly backward coastal area where ragged cliffs act like a magnet to those with suicidal tendencies and provide the viewer with memories of Rebecca. Its into this that quiet city girl Teiko is thrown, with these paltry clues she endeavours to unravel the tragedies of Kanazawa.

It Grips You

[crossbow0106 · 8/10 · 15 May 2008]

This is a taut mystery about a newlywed couple where the husband disappears on a last business trip. His wife Teiko tries to retrace his steps by traveling to northern Japan to find him. Along the way, she finds out things about him that surprise her, but also make her realize how little she knows him (they were only married one week before he disappeared). The plot thickens over time and you find out little revelations along the way. I found this movie to be very well put together, it doesn't bore you. The acting is uniformly good and the best thing is that it is in black and white. That actually enhances the film, especially as the little twists in the story unfold. If you're a fan of mystery/film noir, you'll like this.

A Cliff Hanger - Literally.

[net_orders · 8/10 · 24 April 2016]

Viewed on DVD. This is a way over par suspense film! Acting is riveting and due entirely to the remarkable performances delivered by the three stunning female lead actresses. The supporting cast (which is huge if you count all the cameos) is also quite good. Film direction is superb and strictly about generating edge-of-your-seat excitement. All stops seem to have been pulled out by the director to ensure the viewer never becomes complacent or comfortable. The pace of roughly the first half of the film is especially dynamic: when characters indicate their intention is to go somewhere, the film immediately cuts to that scene. Much of the second half includes various flavors of flashbacks mostly from the perspective of the lead actresses. Most occur on the edge of a cliff with the ever present threat of yet another over-the-cliff murder! The male protagonist is shown/confirmed to have lead two lives (perhaps with the help of his family members). What has been written off (by the police) as a suicide was really a murder; what was heretofore been considered a murder was a suicide; what was considered to be a suicide or murder may have been just an accident. Original source material exhibits a few artifacts of wear. Black and white cinematography (wide screen) is a bit on the dark side. Score is fine. Subtitles are just right (with a minimum of translational embellishment). WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

I didn't really care...

[adverts · 6/10 · 27 October 2005]

Zero Focus plays like a bit like a semi-documentary police procedural and a bit like Rashomon. It's fast moving and seems to be well acted (sometimes it's hard to tell when the language spoken is not your native tongue). It's filled with twists and turns and should please some mystery fans. Keep in mind it is not a "thriller" - certainly not in the 2005 Blockbuster bid budget sense of the word.

**SPOILER** The odd thing about the film is that you are aware that the husband is dead in the first half of the film -- and you are never led to believe that he MAY be alive (in fact, he isn't). The main thrust of the second half is finding out why/how he died (and how his brother died). Unfortunately, by the end, I didn't care. Why? Perhaps not enough character development -- I didn't feel I "knew" or really liked the characters, so I didn't care what happened to them.

Wonderful

[gbill-74877 · 8/10 · 3 December 2022]

The name of this film (and the book it's derived from) is an enigma to me, but perhaps it's something lost in translation. Regardless, it's a very enjoyable mystery drama with noir overtones, helped considerably by its beautiful on-location cinematography along the Noto Kongo Coast in the wintertime. As the sea rages underneath Yase Cliff, so too do the emotions of the three women connected by an ad agency manager who has gone missing while on a business trip (Koji Nambara).

The first of these women is his wife (Yoshiko Kuga) of only one week, who was swept away by passion when she married him. The scene with their intense kiss in which she says "his overwhelming passion suffocated me" followed by him complimenting her "youthful body" in the bathtub after sex is brief, but pretty steamy for the period. Not surprisingly, she doesn't really know him all that well, and as she travels to snow country with one of his colleagues to see where he might be, she starts unraveling secrets about him. I won't spoil it, but one thing she discovers is that he was in a common-law relationship with a humble woman (Ineko Arima) before he married her. There's a third woman, the affluent wife of a friend (Hizuru Takachiho) who is involved as well, a character who brings in an underlying theme of the work, which is the trauma Japanese women had to endure following the country's defeat in WWII and the American occupation. Impoverished, some turned to prostitution, and this woman has worked hard to try to escape her shameful past.

Much of the story is told in flashback, and the pace is brisk - a plus if you ask me, as I took it as respecting the viewer's intelligence, but regardless, you'll have to pay attention to keep up. The narration from the wife, the twists and turns, and the rugged scenery all hooked me. Director Yoshitaro Nomura did a wonderful job with this story, and I'll have to seek more of his films out. This one was heading for an even higher rating, but fumbled a bit towards the end when it had the actual story told as a revision to one just hypothesized. It wasn't all bad as the variations were interesting and all the dots got connected, but how it suddenly came out of the other person seemed implausible. Better was that moment of real menace on the cliffs that preceded it. Overall though, a fine film, and definitely one to check out.

Not a bad idea but VERY talky and the ending seemed to go on and on and on.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 28 November 2011]

The ideas in "Zero No Shôten" are quite interesting, but the overall film left me rather flat--mostly because the final portion of the film just seemed way too talky and drug on and on for too long.

This movie begins with a young bride searching for her husband. It seems that after being married only about a week, he disappeared and his new wife refuses to let go. So, she spends a lot of time searching throughout the countryside for him but keeps coming up with nothing. Then, out of the blue, she learns that the man has killed himself--but that he was using a different name. It seems that he'd been leading double lives--and already was married. But there's more to it than this...and maybe it wasn't suicide after all...and maybe there are more victims.

Around halfway through the film, the second wife starts to realize that the suicide isn't exactly as the police have determined. So far, so good. But then the film talks and talks and talks. First, the second wife explains her theory. Then, the man's mistress (yes, there is a third woman) explains what happened. It all takes a very long time and is incredibly talky--as if they need to explain the movie. It's a shame, as the first part of the film was well done--the final was unconvincing and poor.

Not at all Hitchockian...though what really IS Hitchcockian? Perhaps Hitchcock's films aren't even Hitchcockian!

Well photographed monotony

[josephbleazard · 5/10 · 16 March 2008]

This was the first film I had seen by Nomura and constituted a major disappointment. Nomura appears to belong to the static variety of Japanese directors, preferring lingering and beautiful black and white shots over the bravura editing of contemporaries such as Seijun Suzuki or early Kurosawa. This approach really does not fit the material which is a stultifyingly dull and procedural mystery story that at no point rises above the generic, or generates any palpable tension or danger.

A point of comparison would be Rebecca by Hitchcock, mostly because of its focus on coastal scenery and echoes of the past affecting a hurried marriage. But this movie lacks any of the sexual or psychological aspects that make Rebecca so interesting. Some of the dialogue and minor performances are appalling. At one point a coastguard turns to a distraught bereaved wife and advises, straightfaced, "Why don't you walk to Noto cliff, It is very beautiful and a common spot to commit suicide." How did that ever get beyond the editing suite? Even the final exposition is ridiculously forced and overlong that I was tempted to fast forward to the end of the ending. One to miss