Graveyard of Honor
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Graveyard of Honor |
| Original title | 仁義 の 墓 場 |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kinji Fukasaku |
| script |
Tatsuhiko Kamoi Hirō Matsuda Fumio Konami |
| production | Tatsuo Yoshida |
| music | Toshiaki Tsushima |
| camera | Hanjiro Nakazawa |
| cut | Osamu Tanaka |
| occupation | |
| |
Graveyard of Honor ( Jap. 仁義の墓場 , Jingi no hakaba , dt. "Yakuza Graveyard Rules") is a Japanese gangster or Yakuzafilm the Toei by director Kinji Fukasaku from 1975. The screenplay for the film comes from the Authors Tatsuhiko Kamoi , Hirō Matsuda and Fumio Konami and is based on two short stories by Gorō Fujita . The film depicts in semi-documentary episodes - with photos from the life of the protagonist details from his difficult youth are told - the rise and later fall of the Yakuza Rikio Ishikawa.
The production was first released in Japan on February 15, 1975. The German DVD was first released on August 23, 2004 in the original language with German subtitles.
In 2002, a remake of the work was created under the direction of Takashi Miike with Takashi Miike's Graveyard of Honor ( 新 ・ 仁義 の 墓 場 , shin jingi no hakaba ).
action
prolog
Rikio Ishikawa, born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1924, lost his mother at a young age. As a teenager, the good and intelligent student is already inspired by the idea of becoming a yakuza. At an early age he tended to use extreme violence and became the leader of his class before fleeing to Tokyo in 1940 to join the Kawada family, well-known Yakuzas. In 1942 he was arrested for assault and released after a year in juvenile detention. During the captivity he learns u. a. Know Kozaburo Imai, a crook friend.
The film starts immediately after the end of the war in Tokyo, which is occupied by the United States . American occupation troops patrol the metropolis, while the former Chinese slaves feel that they have won the war after their liberation and discharge their pent-up hatred against the Japanese. Organized local gangs are fighting, while some of the Yakuza giants are trying in vain to gain a foothold in politics.
rise and fall
Tokyo 1946. The thug and daredevil Rikio Ishikawa conquered a high place within the yakuza hierarchy due to his initial unconditional loyalty in the turmoil of the post-war period. As part of a large gang, he and other members of the criminal organization control the black market trade in Shinjuku , a district of Tokyo. His frequent and extreme excesses of violence quickly give him the reputation of a brutal gangster who throws the long-established clans into chaos with his ruthlessness. His self-directed orgies of violence violate the strict regulations of the yakuza and the codes of honor .
The acts of violence are directed initially against the resurgent Chinese, and later against members of other Yakuza families. When his disrespectful behavior finally turns even against his own godfather and his followers, his inevitable fall begins. He becomes an outcast. Because of his unforgivable offense, Ishikawa - who hopes to become a godfather himself - is declared fair game ; his career seems over. To avoid the yakuza's vengeance, Ishikawa finally faces justice. When he got out of prison after 18 months in prison, his strict course of confrontation drove him to further violations, which ultimately led to a ten-year banishment from the Tokyo underworld.
With the help of the petite Chieko, who, as a docile geisha, brings in money for him , Ishikawa uses his forced exile in Osaka to prepare for a bloody return. The thug, suffering from tuberculosis , used hard drugs for the first time abroad, which from then on cast a self-destructive spell on him. After a year of exile, Ishikawa returns to Tokyo with a junkie friend , Katsuji Ozaki, where he rebels against his former friend Imai and kills him in October 1949 after a scuffle. He is sentenced to ten years of forced labor for the murder, but is released on bail after an appeal. In this deceptive freedom he has to see how his seriously ill companion Chieko, whom he only learned to respect later, chooses suicide. A little later he narrowly escapes a fatal assassination attempt by members of his own family. At the end of the film, Ishikawa's appeal is dismissed and he has to serve his remaining sentence. After six years in detention, Ishikawa has jumped suicidally from the roof of Fuchu Prison.
background
In the early 1970s, director Kinji Fukasaku created the five-part yakuza film series Jingi naki tatakai ( 仁義 な eine 戦 い ), an extremely popular genre series, whereupon his film production company Tōei asked him to make further sequels. However, Fukasaku refused to continue the traditional yakuza series and developed a straggler in the light of his own experiences in post-war Japan in 1946: Graveyard of Honor . He cast the gangster film with the then well-known actor Watari Tetsuya in the role of the yakuza gangster Rikio Ishikawa .
The staging is a turning point in the cinematic representation of the yakuza, who so far served their godparents unconditionally and ensured compliance with the code of conduct ( jingi ) and its implementation. Fukasaku's leading actor reveals those “laws” out of a misunderstood urge to validate, thus becoming an uncontrollable outcast who ultimately lives excessively as a dangerous criminal and becomes a danger to society as well as to the Yakuzas. He thus seals his own fate.
Awards
- 1976: Award for Best Director for Kinji Fukasaku
Reviews
The lexicon of international films wrote that the film was "a portrait of a society that is as violent as it is precisely observed that is being crushed between tradition and new beginnings" . Above all, the production captivates with “its main actor, but also its brittle narrative style, which alternates seamlessly between documentary intimacy and over-the-top action cinema” .
Web links
- Graveyard of Honor in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Graveyard of Honor in the online movie database
- Graveyard of Honor at arte.tv