Violence at Noon (1966)

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.

Director:

Nagisa Ôshima

Writers:

Taijun Takeda (novel), Tsutomu Tamura (screenplay)

Stars:

Hideo Kanze, Hideko Kawaguchi, Saeda Kawaguchi

Cast

Credited cast:
Hideo Kanze	...	Inagaki, husband of the raped woman
Hideko Kawaguchi	...	Matsuko's mother
Saeda Kawaguchi	...	Shino Shinozaki
Narumi Kayashima	...	Jinbo, teacher
Teruko Kishi	...	Shino's grandmother
Hôsei Komatsu	...	Shino's father
Akiko Koyama	...	Matsuko Koura, wife of Eisuke, teacher
Kei Satô	...	Eisuke Oyamada
Ryôko Takahara	...	Raped woman
Taiji Tonoyama	...	School director
Rokkô Toura	...	Genji Hyuga
Fumio Watanabe	...	Inspector Haraguchi
Sen Yano	...	Mayor

Storyline

Hakuchu no Torima" is the portrayal of a violent rapist as seen through the recollections of his wife and one of his victims. As the film starts, Eisuke (Kei Sato) encounters Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi), who works as a maid in a house. She is a former coworker from a failed collective farm, whose life he once saved -- only to rape her. Soon, Eisuke's criminal pattern of rapes and murders emerges as he goes on assaulting women (Shino being the witness of one of them, as Eisuke tries to violate her employer). When cooperating with the police on making a description of the rapist, Shino withholds her crucial knowledge of his identity. She prefers writing letters to Eisuke's dutiful wife, Matsuko, a schoolteacher (Akiko Koyama -- Mrs Oshima), in order to expose his true nature and perhaps induce her into turning Eisuke over to the police.

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Plot Keywords:

forced sex | teacher | sweat | gag | cleavage | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama

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Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

15 July 1966 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Violence at Noon

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sozosha

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The movie is made up of 1,508 takes. The average shot length is 4.5 seconds.

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Connections

References Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)

User Reviews

a wild, dark story of love and death in nihilistic Japan

Violence at Noon looks at one men and two women, but it's certainly not a love triangle, at least in any 'normal' sense. The director, the iconoclast Nagisa Oshima, takes a decidedly non-linear approach to this story of a rapist and murderer who has ties to two women, one he raped many years before and his wife (or ex-wife perhaps).

I actually DID feel confused a lost a couple of time during the film, but only in the first half. It did jump around a lot, but after a certain point I clicked into Oshima's fast-paced rhythm (and it has about 2,000 cuts so that is a lot even by today's standards), and it has such a fiery sense of what is right and wrong and how the gray areas of the world just take over, and also how a rapist and murder can be understood, if certainly not "liked" at all. It's a dynamic, angry character, simmering and volatile, and when he's on screen you can't take your eyes off him (and it makes for one of the really great openings to any movie, as he enters a house and eyes a woman, a very dangerous-sexy scene).

I really got engrossed in this story of suicide, regret, guilt, and what happens when enveloped in society - that it's a murder mystery is so secondary a note, maybe even the last thing on Oshima's mind. In fact if it hadn't been for a scene on a train that is just shot very clumsily and pretentiously, it might be close to being a perfect "art" film, where a director takes some major chances with style and effect to tell his story. As it stands, I was drawn into Violence at Noon through the emotionally harrowing performances and the innovative editing (and even among other "New Wave" filmmakers of the era who used editing to unconventional effect this had an uncanny sense of going back and forth in time - taking on memory as snapshots, but still cohesive for a full story).