FIGHTING ELEGY

The most important thing you need to know about Seijun Suzuki's FIGHTING ELEGY (1966), is that it's only half of a film. Taken on it's own superlative merits, it's a satisfying, compelling half of a film. But it ends abruptly and there is clearly much more of the story to be told. The film was based on a novel by Takashi Suzuki and director Suzuki clearly intended to make the follow-up, second part of this story using the rest of the book as source material but when his next film, BRANDED TO KILL, performed poorly at the box-office, plans for FIGHTING ELEGY 2 were abandoned.

It's a shame as I would really have liked to see where the story and characters went following this thoroughly engaging first film. Set in pre-war 1935 Japan, FIGHTING ELEGY is the story of Kiroku Nanbu (Hideki Takahashi), a teenager fraught with sexual anxiety and Catholic guilt. He's in love with the beautiful, chaste and virginal Catholic school girl, Michiko (Junko Asano). But he's so shy and clumsy around girls that he's forced to excessive masturbation to relieve his tensions. When self pleasure proves inadequate, Kiroku finds an outlet in violence.

He joins a teenage gang of young toughs and struggles to master their fighting techniques. With the help of an older man, Turtle (Yusuke Kawazu), Kiroku learns the necessary fighting skills and rises in the gang hierarchy. His rebellious ways soon earn him an expulsion from his school at the same time he learns that Michiko, his one true unrequited love, is leaving to join a convent.

Kiroku is transferred to another town where he quickly falls in with the local gang. But widespread rebellion is in the air and Kiroku sees an opportunity to fight for something larger than gang turf by joining the revolution spearheaded by Ikki Kita (Hiroshi Midorigawa), whom Kiroku had met previously.

FIGHTING ELEGY begins in a light hearted manner and gradually becomes darker as Kiroku's journey takes him into real danger. Director Suzuki, as he did in TOKYO DRIFTER, uses lots of French New Wave jump-cut editing to move things along at a brisk clip. The screenplay, by Kaneto Shindo, mixes humor with violence and aching, yearning young love. The cast is uniformly solid, Kenji Hagiwara's cinematography is sharp and crisp and the whole package is a first rate portrait of a troubled young man struggling to find his place in the world.

Not as gonzo brilliant as TOKYO DRIFTER, FIGHTING ELEGY is nonetheless a superb film. Check it out if you get the chance but remember, the ending will leave you hanging for something that doesn't exist.

Recommended.