91 Underworld Beauty

[Finch]

Retrieving the diamonds he stashed before his arrest, thief Miyamoto hopes to help his old partner Mihara, crippled during the heist. Their former boss, crime lord Oyane, offers to mediate with a foreign buyer, but secretly wants the stones for himself. The deal goes awry when gunmen appear on the scene. Mihara swallows the diamonds but dies in the chase, leaving a valuable corpse in the police morgue. Miyamoto forms an uneasy alliance with Mihara's wildcat sister Akiko to keep the gems away from gangsters, cops and even Akiko's greedy boyfriend. This wildly inventive early noir sees Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill, Tattooed Life) infectiously playing with genre rules and gender stereotypes.

LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

New 4K restoration of the film by Nikkatsu Corporation

Uncompressed mono PCM audio

New interview with critic Mizuki Kodama (2024, 15 mins)

Bonus feature: Seijun Suzuki’s Love Letter (1959, 40 mins)

Audio commentary on Love Letter by Suzuki biographer William Carroll (2024)

Trailers

Newly improved English subtitle translation

Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow

Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Claudia Siefen-Leitich and an archival review of the film
Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

[senseabove]

Love Letter! That makes the disc worth picking up on its own. Imagine the movie Suzuki would make after going on a binge of Sirk and Visconti melodramas...

[rapta]

I'd love for them to add a lesser-known shorter film to every Suzuki release...shame they didn't add one to Tattooed Life, but maybe they will for the next one? Either way, this is a day one purchase for sure. Still regret not buying Arrow's Early Years Vol 1 set (but thankfully did get Vol 2, The Taisho Trilogy, and the Nikkatsu Diamond Guys sets). Also, my sister's partner will be pleased when he next comes round, as it turns out he's a bit of a Suzuki fan too!

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I remember seeing Underworld Beauty back when it was first released on DVD as a teenager and thought it was a minor Suzuki film. I revisited it about two years ago and was completely wrong. Having seen most of Suzuki's works, even the ones that could be described as minor by Suzuki are filled with so many singularly strange moments of brilliance and comedy than they all start to appear major in my eyes. If I recall correctly, this is Suzuki's first film in the Nikkatsu Scope format and it's clear he knew how to film the frame like few others.

Love Letter is a treat too. I saw this when it played recently in Los Angeles thinking it would never get a home video release, partly due to its runtime. Pure dreamlike melodrama, and emphasis on the roots of melodrama with the film set completely to the music of Frankie Sakai. Not surprised to see William Carrol doing a commentary as his recent book on Suzuki makes a point of how he finds it to be one of his greatest films from the Nikkatsu period.

[domino harvey]

I am not a Suzuki booster but I gave this a shot and didn't like it at all. Frankly, after eight films in, I think Suzuki is a bad director who sees himself in the bombastic Sam Fuller / John Huston mode but with none of their filmmaking skill. There are several moments in this film in which I was aghast at how inept he is at something as basic as showing nightclub denizens being shocked at someone's arrival. The story here is too silly to be shocking but too unpleasant to be fun, and it doesn't even work within internal gangster movie logic. The most surprising thing in the film is seeing that the David Niven remake of My Man Godfrey got distribution in Japan! Apart from Gate of Flesh, which utilizes his tics well in what may be a broken clock scenario, I haven't really cared for any of Suzuki's other works (and his two most popular films are absolute no-gos for me) and I'm probably not dipping my toe back in after this. I have no doubt that if you like his most popular films, you'll love this. You also just get something else out of movies than me.

[Red Screamer]

I’m not really familiar with Suzuki, but I found this quite good; a nightmarish, bubbling noir that balances the blunt meat-and-potatoes pulp of the story and an ambient spaciness, lined with expressionistic bumps and flourishes. The high-contrast ‘Scope cinematography is the main attraction, discovering unusual details in the streetscapes and chopping up the film’s few main sets with creative, harsh lighting schemes to make them look interesting in a different way each time they reappear.

I really like what feihong wrote in Suzuki’s filmmaker thread and I want to echo the comments about condensation and repeated imagery, which play a big part in the film’s dreamy feel while also giving it a more immediate sense of cyclical progression and emotional build without needing much explanation.

David Bordwell also has some good brief comments on Suzuki’s style in the haywire finale.