Gate of Flesh

Audience Reviews

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02/24/2021 Crazy, just... crazy. Suzuki is almost restrained and I think the subject matter helped restrain the director somewhat. But it's still quite shocking, given what his peers were up to at the time. See more 08/20/2017 Although visually more engaging than is the lurid pulp story, Gate of Flesh is prime Suzuki through and through. Jo Shishido portrays the battle-scarred Shintaro with a brute animality comparable to Brando's Stanley Kowalksi in a Streetcar Named Desire.The film's postwar mise-en-scène (which is even more dismal than the Vienna in Carol Reed's The Third Man), is amazingly put together given the budgetary constraints Suzuki often had to work within. Ultimately, what leaves the deepest impression is Suzuki's dazzling use of fluorescent lighting to punctuate the films major scenes. And although the film's strengths lie largely in it's visuals, the dialogue still brings plenty of substance to the table as evidenced in the protagonist's poignant closing lines - "Are we eating to sell our bodies or are we selling our bodies to eat? - and either way, what are we living for?" See more 12/04/2015 very risque in '64 but tame by 2days standards one of first S&M soft core sex films called pinku eiga also gets a star 4 starring Joe Shisido I think he's the Japanese Steve McQueen so cool & a reel badass! See more 06/09/2014 Awesome and yards ahead of it's time, Gate of Flesh lets all the ugliness of the post war period in Japan come to bare. Desperation leads to violence, sex and personal destruction. See more 11/11/2013 Heralded as one of the first in a strain of sadomasochistic films to come from Japan, 'Gate of Flesh' (1964) is renowned director Seijun Suzuki's strange cross-breed of exploitation and art-house. The story follows a group of prostitutes living in a burnt out house in post World War II Tokyo. This merciless group operate on a simple set of rules: no free sex (which is synonymous with love) and anyone who breaks this rule is to be tortured and left for dead, no exceptions. When an ex-corporal called Shintaro Ibuki (Jo Shishido) arrives however the group is sent into disarray as they become more and more enamoured with him. Affected most by this arrival is nineteen-year-old emotionally dead Maya (Yumiko Nogawa), who falls in love with Ibuki and begins to see him as the brother she lost in the war. Gate of Flesh is a film about carnal desires and the inter-changeability of pleasure and pain, the films title itself is used multiple times in the script to represent passing through the realm of sex for money and achieving something you're willing to die for, love. This is not to say however that the film is empowering towards the idea of love, if anything the harpy like group of protagonists see it as a sign weakness, punishing those who give in. It is in this sense that 'Gate of Flesh' makes its most interesting comments about the way in which men use women and the price of living "are we eating to sell our bodies or are we selling our bodies to eat? - and either way, what are we living for?" In a cinematography sense the film is very surrealistic, superimposed faces appear and disappear and at one point the face of a red demon (a representation of Maya's longing for pain) is seen sprouting from the top of Ibuki's head. One of the most notable instances of said surrealism however is when the film briefly cuts away from the back alleys of Tokyo and each of the four prostitutes appear against a background that matches their colour coded dresses, saying a sentence about the way they're feeling, it's as equally bizarre as it is beautiful. The film is clearly anti-American and Suzuki has no hesitation when he comes to showing the negative effects of the occupation of Japan and the subsequent democracy. In many ways Gate of Flesh is about transformation, much like the traditional Geisha-style O-Machi is strung up and destroyed, so to is the old vision of Japan by America. Verdict: Extremely shocking for it's time and equally as challenging, Gate of Flesh is a must see for those interested in Japanese cinema. See more 05/19/2013 there is a lot of- inconsistent - social commentary in this film but i liked for the fact that it takes place in a time that was not japan's best light and explores some of the realities of the era; there is some not so subtle blame cast towards the usa for the circumstances the characters find themselves in but i think there's enough ambiguity in the narrative for some of the blame to be left at the feet of human nature. i really like the use of color in the film but i found the film a bit claustrophobic due to the lack of any real change in the setting and seeing the same narrow alleys over and over again. and while the film looks at the darker history of life in post war tokyo, and casts aspersions toward america regarding it, there is no real reflection on what responsibility japan and the characters themselves bore for their situation. See more Read all reviews

Gate of Flesh

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