Lost in Criterion

Charlie Chaplin's first movie with synced sound (as opposed to his first film to feature onscreen dialogue) is the great silent film star saying no thank you to the concept of synced sound. City Lights is a great first start as we decompress from 24 Zatoichi films and relearn how to do the podcast, but I'll be honest it's rough going rewiring our brains from that.

We say goodbye to the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman Boxet with film #25: Zatoichi's Conspiracy (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1973), and we end with neither a highlight or lowlight, but  a solidly middling entry. It doesn't help that not only are we tired of this, last week's set contained both the best and worst the series has to offer and this last one is just an inoffensive end to the series. We also cover the additional materials in the set with commentary from Tony Rayns and a short documentary on the life of Shintaro Katsu during the Zatoichi tv series of the late 70s from John Nathan.

Our penultimate Zatoichi episode brings us one that is possibly the best Zatoichi movie, one that is not quite the most middling of the middle ones, and one that is quite probably the most infuriating movie the Criterion Collection has made us watch so far.

Zatoichi and the One Armed Swordsman (Mimiyoshi Yasuda, 1971) is probably a metaphor for international relations as we see Ichi meet Shaw Brothers' wuxia hit The one Armed Swordsman travel through time and over seas to have a lot of misunderstandings due to the language barrier. Zatoichi at Large (Kazuo Mori, 1972) has perhaps the best pre-credits sequence of any movie ever and then settles into a rushed and blase tale of people failing to communicate even through there is no language barrier. And Zatoichi in Desperation (1972) sees star Shintaro Katsu step into the directors' chair much to the detriment of the series and our mental health.

Our itinerant samurai expert Donovan H. joins us for this set of three Zatoichi films, giving us some insight into Ichi's sword fighting style and what some of the movies we won't be watching say about Ichi's blindness. As for what we did watch: Kenji Misumi, who directed the first Zatoichi, directs his last two films of the series: Samaritan Zatoichi (1968) and Zatoichi and the Fire Festival (1970). While both suffer from the poor scripts that have accompanied many of Misumi's outings, he at least tries to make visually interesting films as he says goodbye to the series, and Zatoichi and the Fire Festival may be a top tier Zatoichi movie because of it (and the naked bathhouse brawl). Between those two, Kihachi Okamoto (The Sword of Doom and Kill!) drags Toshiro Mifune's Samurai with No Name into the Zatoichi universe in the overly long, surprisingly by the numbers Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)

It's week six our wandering journey through the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman boxset and we get some of our favorites of the bunch. Zatoichi the Outlaw (Satsuo Yamamoto, 1967) is perhaps the most politically interesting of the films so far, introducing us to an teetotaling anarchist samurai preaching about agricultural co-ops but also showcasing some pretty egregious stereotypes about blind people. Zatoichi Challenged (Kenji Misumui, 1967) gives Zatoichi a kid again, and finds our hero fighting the exploitation of labor, both within a textile sweatshop and to save the kid's dad from forced labor as a porno plate producer. Lastly, Zatoichi and the Fugitives (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968) is the most blood-soaked (and spurting) Zatoichi we've seen yet but also co-stars the phenomenal Takashi Shimura.

It is week five of the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, which means we are now halfway through! Fittingly for the halfway point, though how could the filmmakers have known, we get three films in which Zatoichi must refrain from violence (but doesn't). Kazuo Miyagawa is once again behind the camera in the beautifully shot Zatoichi's Vengeance (Tokuzō Tanaka, 1966), in which Ichi meets a blind priest who tells him he's a bad guy what because of all the killing. The great Kaneto Shindo pens the script for Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966) in which Ichi takes a sabbatical from killing to go on a pilgrimage of repentance, then immediately kills a man and is stalked by a horse, leading to a fight with some sort of metaphor for imperialism. And lastly Zatoichi's Cane Sword (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1967) is an origin story for Ichi's sword, in which the apprentice of its maker tells Ichi the sword will shatter if it is used to kill any more people (or presumably cut any more Go boards in half), so Ichi gets a real job and tries harder not to kill anyone than in either of the previous two films.

It's week four of nine of our trip through the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman boxset. First up is Zatoichi's Revenge (Akira Inoue, 1965) wherein Ichi faces off against bad guys who are actually maybe too evil for this series. Then it's the mercifully short Zatoichi and the Doomed Man (Kazuo Mori, 1965). And we finish off with Zatoichi and the Chess Expert (Kenji Misumi, 1965) wherein Ichi meets another woman named Otane, makes friends with a board game loving samurai named Jumonji, and there is too much plot but in a good way. 

In week three of our boxset endeavor, we cover Zatoichi's Flashing Sword (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964) which has a series highlight so far Underwater Zatoichi Attack; then Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (Kenji Misumi, 1964) which gives Zatoichi a baby, a phenomenal premise that paves the way for Lone Wolf and Cub (on the horizon at Spine 841); and Adventures of Zatoichi (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1964) in which we get comic relief door-to-door salesmen, Ichi cutting an entire go board in half in one stroke, and a fantastic gag after Ichi fails to kill one of a group of five thugs attacking him.

It's week 2 of the Zatoichi boxset and we get our first taste of what will become a favorite aspect of the films moving forward: Zatoichi versus a corrupt government. That doesn't show up until movie six though, and we've got two others to talk about, too. First up is Zatoichi the Fugitive (Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963) which kicks off with some comedy sumo and sees the return of Otane from the first two films. Then we have Zatoichi on the Road (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963) where Zatoichi decides that nearly everyone involved in the plot is bad and deserves to die. And we finish up with Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964) which not only brings us that aforementioned bad magistrate but is the most artistically interesting of the series so far, no doubt in part due to the cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa who also shot Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojimbo, and Floating Weeds across a vast career that also spans five more Zatoichi films that we won't touch for a few more weeks.

Oh boy.

Sometimes the Criterion Collection hears a whiff that there's two guys doing a Spine Number podcast and says to themselves, "What can we do to mess this up?" Normally, within the Collection, and therefore within our podcast, each Spine Number release is a single film (or maybe a couple) or a collection of short works. Sometimes a boxset will have it's own number, but if the films in the boxset are features, each will have it's own release. But there are notable exceptions to this rule, boxsets made of feature works that it would not make sense (artistically or financially) to sell individually, so Criterion packages them all together under a single Spine. On exceedingly rare conditions, that single boxset contains over 2000 minutes of material. We cannot talk about 2000 minutes of material in a single episode.

This week we start the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman boxset. It contains 25 films released between 1962 and 1973, and we have decided to cover the set by as one bluray disc per episode. There's three films per disc, in chronological order of their release. Yes, that means we'll be spending nine weeks on this set.

Our first episode covers The Tale of Zatoichi (Kenji Misumi, 1962), The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (Kazuo Mori, 1962), and The New Tale of Zatoichi (Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963).