HOUSE OF BAMBOO (director/writer: Samuel Fuller; screenwriter: Harry Kleiner; cinematographer: Joe MacDonald; editor: James B. Clark; cast: Robert Ryan (Sandy Dawson), Robert Stack (Eddie Kenner/Spanier), Shirley Yamaguchi (Mariko), Cameron Mitchell (Griff), Brad Dexter (Capt. Hanson), Sessue Hayakawa (Inspector Kito), Biff Elliot (Webber), Sandro Giglio (Ceram), DeForest Kelley (Charlie), 1955)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A total remake of "Street With No Name," as this time the volatile Samuel Fuller offers an action-packed thriller in his "House of Bamboo", set in post-WW II Japan.
In 1954 an American crime syndicate, made up of ex-GI's and organized by a devious psychopath, Sandy (Ryan), rob a train of machine guns, where an American soldier, Webber (Biff), dies not telling who the boss of the robbery is. But, his U.S. Army interrogators, in a joint investigation with Japanese authorities, discover he has secretly married a Japanese woman, Mariko (Yamaguchi). Webber tells the lead investigator, Captain Hanson (Dexter), that if anyone should find out that he is married to Mariko, she would be in grave danger.
The army assigns an undercover agent, Sergeant Eddie Kenner (Stack), who uses the name Eddie Spanier as a cover-up for his real identity. The real Spanier is currently in prison for armed robbery and is a good friend of the dead soldier, Webber, from their army days. Spanier first visits Mariko and feigns disappointment when she tells him her husband is dead. He then goes into a Tokyo pachinko parlor and demands protection money from the boss, but soon finds that he is being roughed up by Sandy's ichi-ban (number one man), Griff (Cameron).
After he is closely checked out by Sandy, who gets a hold of his police record through his police connections, he is taken into the gang. He uses Mariko as his "kimono girl", someone who takes care of him sexually. He uses her, thinking that she is someone he could trust to get word to Captain Hanson of his activities, in case he runs into trouble with this dangerous assignment.
The rule of the gang, is that if one of them gets wounded, the others shoot him. This way no one talks if captured. On his first caper with the gang, in a factory, the robbery turns violent and Spanier is wounded, but Sandy against his own orders, pulls him out to safety. He thereby comes to favor Eddie to the disgust of Griff, and the reason for it, is that by all indications, Sandy is physically attracted to Eddie, as there is also a hint of homosexuality in the Sandy character, as suspicions arise due to the way he contemptuously treats the kimono girls.
One of the most absurd scenes, even for Fuller, who lives to film whacky scenes like this one, is in the teahouse, where the American gangsters are partaking of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and Griff is carrying on to the ice-cold Sandy about not being close to him anymore, ranting at him, I'm your ichi-ban, not that newcomer. Why can't I go with you on the next job?
Fuller's main motifs: dual identities, betrayal, and racial conflict, all play a major part in the playing out of the story. His busy camera is almost perverse in catching the evil smirks of the gang members, the crowded Ginza district's feverish atmosphere, a Kabuki troupe taking a moment off in practice to tell a hobo like questioner that the girl he is looking for is no longer here, the ritual of a steam bath being trampled on by the impulsive American in a rage to find his woman, and in the climactic scene, in an amusement park that features a whirling globe (as if the whole world is spinning out of control), Fuller has Eddie gun down the crime boss as the globe continues to whirl. The shoot-out between Sandy and Eddie, comes after a robbery is aborted, when Sandy is tipped off by his informants that the cops are waiting at the bank, and Sandy assumes it is the jealous Grigg who ratted him out, whom he kills while insanely telling the dead man that I know what you did. But he soon finds out that it was Eddie who betrayed him, the one he was willing to give all his love to. He thereby comes up with a harebrained scheme to have the Japanese police kill Eddie for him, when he calls them about a robbery in progress, leaving Eddie propped-up against the wall of the place. But Eddie escapes and is reunited with Mariko at the film's conclusion.
This is a particularly violent and crude noir work, whose subject matter offers a penetrating look at the American occupation of Japan, basically saying that what the U.S. is doing there is criminal. It also magnifies the huge cultural bridges the two countries have and why it is so difficult for the two countrys to get to know and trust one another. This is highlighted by the very formal structure of the love relationship between Mariko and Eddie, where Eddie is always viewed as a foreigner and can't be fully accepted, no matter what he does. Their love story left an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, as there seemed to be a psychological separation between the two that couldn't be reconciled.
Even though the story had a lot of loose ends to it and didn't make sense most of the time, the strangeness of the characters and the oddness of the location made for a telling tale, a sure-fire iconoclastic Fuller experience, for a director who just goes into a film and grabs what he wants out of it, not caring a darn about how silly it all looks. Fuller, as always, is resourceful and fresh. His films guarantee the viewer a jolt or two of electricty into their nonplused movie faces. Here, the number of jolts is much higher, thereby making this an even juicier Fuller spectacle.
REVIEWED ON 4/16/2000 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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