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Fumihazushita Haru
The Boy Who Came Back
The Spring That Didn't Come
Japan 1958
produced by
Masayuki Takagi for Nikkatsu
directed by Seijun Suzuki
starring Sachiko Hidari, Akira Kobayashi, Ruriko Asaoka, Eiko Higashitani, Jo Shishido, Shizue Natsukawa, Toru Abe, Makiko Aoi, Akemi Ebata, Shoki Fukae, Ayako Fukuda, Ikuhiro Hashiguchi, Akira Hisamatsu, Kyoko Hori, Michiko Kamata, Hiroshi Kato, Kenji Kawai, Tamae Kiyokawa, Shosei Muto, Mino Nambu, Hideaki Nitani, Keisuke Noro, Hiromi Seki, Fudeko Tanaka, Reiko Tanikawa, Taiji Tonoyama, Noriko Watari, Terue Shigemori, Ikuo Nikaido, Reiko Sakuma, Kaku Takashina, Hiroshi Midorikawa, Tokuhei Miyahara, Akinori Hanamura (as Kazuo Mihara), Kaoru Higuchi, Chigusa Takayama, Mamoru Tsuyuki, Takeshi Ida, Takashi Nomura (as Takashi Sudo), Shiro Yanase
written by Tatsuto Okada, Nobuyoshi Terada, music by Hikaru Hayashi
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Young Keiko (Sachiko Hidari) volunteers at the BBS (Big Brothers
and Sisters), a private organisation dedicated to pull young ex-convicts
back into society. Her first case is Nobuo (Akira Kobayashi), a young man
who has been to juvenile prison twice, once for trying to strangle his
dad, and who is pretty much a hothead with fits of rage. And at first,
he's less than happy about Keiko meddling in his affairs. That's not to
say he doesn't want to go the straight and narrow, quite the opposite, but
he has no idea how to do that yet is unwilling to listen to advice, even
if it's obviously well-meant, and his temper gets the better of him ever
so often on top of that. He even gets violent towards Keiko a couple of
times, but always stops before doing any real damage. But the less
appreciative Nobuo shows himself to be, the harder Keiko works to turn him
around, and she soon finds out he's actually an artist at heart, and he's
still in love with his schooltime sweetheart Kazue (Ruriko Asaoka), so
Keiko tries to bring them together again - with quite some success even
(though it takes a while) ... but then she realizes she has fallen in love
with nobuo herself. Nobuo, who has by now started doing caricatures of
tourists in the streets for a living, hasn't fully shaken his past yet, or
more accurately his past life hasn't shaken him as a bunch of hoodlums
eventually kidnap Kazue with the intent of selling her into prostitution -
first and foremost to teach Nobuo a lesson. This of course gets Nobuo
enraged, possibly past breaking point even ... An early effort
by the later genre-subverting genius Seijun Suzuki, this is actually a
rather tame, not to say clichéed crime melodrama that's little more than
a job-for-hire for his then-employer Nikkatsu at least at first
sight. Of course, if one takes a closer look, one will find some quirks
typical for the director even here, plus one can't deny the movie looks
properly elegant, thanks to inventive camerawork and careful compositions
- but that said, Branded to Kill
it is not. But that said, should vintage Asian formula cinema be
your thing (as it is mine), this is definitely good entertainment, as it's
well-directed, well-played, and while the script isn't exactly original,
it's well-structured and paced, so it's really worth a look!
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