Crime

Drama

Mystery

飢餓海峡

Toei Company

Japan

日本語

A Fugitive from the Past

Rentaro Mikuni

Sachiko Hidari

Kōji Mitsui

Yoshi Katō

Sadako Sawamura

Susumu Fujita

Akiko Kazami

Seiichirō Kameishi

Akikane Sawa

Tadashi Suganuma

Kōji Sekiyama

Nobuo Yana

Hajime Kubo

Gōzō Sōma

Genji Kawai

Hideo Murota

Osamu Kimura

Akio Suzuki

Masanobu Ōkubo

Tadashi Katō

Ken Takakura

Junzaburō Ban

Hidesuke Sone

Mitsuo Andō

Rinichi Yamamoto

Kyoko Shinobazu

Itsuma Mogami

Tatsuya Kitayama

Kosaku Okano

Junnosuke Takasu

Shirō Ōki

Ryō Suga

Osamu Yamanouchi

Sakae Shima

Shōhachi Uchikoshi

Yuji Kitamine

Tomiko Makinouchi

Asako Maki

Yuki Hayami

Mineo Matsudaira

Kiyoshi Matsukawa

Takashi Sawamura

Kōsaku Mita

Ryô Mihara

Tamae Araki

Hisako Kawamura

Takashi Toyama

Shinko Endô

Junji Nishimura

Sadao Yagi

San'yû Saitô

Kinto Tamura

Akira Yano

Chineko Sugawara

Yuriko Anjo

Tomu Uchida

Tsutomu Mizukami

Mikio Mori

Naoyuki Suzuki

Hanjirō Nakazawa

Isao Tomita

Haku Yamauchi

Sadao Uemura

Yozo Uchida

Yasunojo Kawasaki

Hiroshi Okawa

Yoshiki Nagasawa

CinemaSerf

Sachiko Hidari ("Yae") is great in this film as the young geisha who shelters "Inukai" (Rentarô Mikuni) from a storm one night. Next morning he leaves her quite a sum of money - one that enables her to change her life, pay her debts - all whilst he disappears. That storm was actually a tornado that sank a local ferry boat. During that investigation, two unknown bodies are identified - and they are soon tied in with a fire that largely destroyed a local village where a robbery had taken place. Where had the money gone? Who killed the men? Many years later, "Yae" spots a photograph in a newspaper that she thinks might be her long lost benefactor and sets out to say thanks - with tragic consequences. It is a long film this, over 3 hours, but the clever - almost internecine - fashion in which the old and new stories are married together; the police investigations and the characterisations are carefully and fully crafted leaves us with quite a complex crime thriller. Now, sadly, what makes the thriller work so well is also what ruined the ending for me. It is flawed in so many ways as to make me want to shout at the screen. It's not that the ending itself is wrong, it is that the police procedures (remembering that there was little science involved in the process) are all just to convenient - far fetched, even. Still, this is a strongly paced, beautifully photographed piece of story-telling cinema that runs parallel narratives well and cohesively.

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A Fugitive from the Past

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