Friday, July 03 7PM to 8:40PM
Walter Reade Theatre
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 165 W 65th St, New York, NY 10023
Kinji Fukasaku’s glorious man opera put an end to the romanticized, heroic (ninkyo) yakuza movies of the Sixties, and introduced the world to a snarling, sneering new yakuza flick that landed like a punch in the face. Combining real-life stories of yakuza bosses with the immediacy of the newsreels that were playing before feature films, Battles Without Honor and Humanity kicked off a four movie series that examined the rise of the yakuza from Japan’s back alleys to its boardrooms.
The yakuza in this movie are not noble, they’re barely even human. When they chop off their pinkies as an act of atonement, it’s mere seconds before a chicken steals it. They fight like rabid dogs over the scraps that drop from their master’s tables, and their blood overflows the gutters because to their bosses they are human garbage. This is the secret history of Japan’s economic miracle, a landmark film about how the country emerged from the ruins of WWII and rebuilt itself on greasy whorehouse handshakes, bribes, and crime. Presented in the brand new 2K digital restoration from the original 35mm negative.
For tickets and information: subwaycinema.com