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Kagenaki Koe
Voice Without a Shadow
Japan 1958
produced by Kaneo Iwai for Nikkatsu
directed by Seijun Suzuki
starring Hideaki Nitani, Yoko Minamida, Jo Shishido, Nobuo Kaneko, Shinsuke Ashida, Kotoe Hatsui, Taketoshi Naito, Keisuke Noro, Toshio Takahara, Kaku Takashina, Kenjiro Uemura, Kan Yanagiya
screenplay by Ryuta Akimoto, Susumu Saji, based on the story Koe by Seicho Matsumoto, music by Hikaru Hayashi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Three years ago, Asako, then a telephone operator for a newspaper, has
heard the voice of the killer of a pawnbroker on the telephone, and since
she has an acute hearing, she was asked to identify the killer by his
voice - but had no luck finding the right man. Now she's happily married
to, Kotani, an executive in a commercial company ... but his job mostly
seems to be to invite his business partners Kawai, Muraoka and Hamazaki to
his place for nightly gambling sessions. Kotani doesn't win or lose much,
so it seems all harmless, but it becomes more and more frustrating for her
to have the men around every night. And then she recognizes Hamazaki's
voice on the phone as that of the pawnbroker's killer. She wants to report
it, but three years later nobody is willing to believe her anymore. But Hamazaki
makes more and more allusions that he knows that she knows, and even makes
some friendly threats. Asako is scared shitless, lives in constant fear
... and then Hamazaki is found dead, murdered, and everything points to
Kotani as the killer. And even she knows about the very solid
circumstantial evidence first hand, Asako's still convinced he's innocent
- but nobody believes her ... but Ishikawa, reporter at the newspaper she
formerly worked at. And he digs up more and moe evidence that the company
Kotani worked at was only a front for a blackmailing ring, and that
Muraoka, boss of the comany, had good reason to kill Hamazaki. And even
though Muraoka has a water-tight alibi, Ishikawa manages to shatter it
more and more ... until Kotani confesses during the interrogation. This
might be the end of everything, but Ishikawa is not ready to give up so
easily ... One of later cult director Seijun Suzuki's very
early films that doesn't yet show him at the height of his game, a film
where he isn't yet deconstructing genre cinema as such - and yet Voice
Without a Shadow is by no means a film without merits, it's a very
elegantly filmed noir, using a beautiful cinematic language full of
interesting pans, camera angles and the like, plus the story is an
interesting one and told in an engaging way, full of tension and suspense.
With this one, Suzuki pretty much proves himself as a master of the craft
of B-movie making rather early in his career, and it's a great precursor
of films to come ...
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