Watch House of Bamboo For Free

Captivating movie !

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Copyright 1955 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Mayfair: 1 July 1955. U.S. release: July 1955. U.K. release: October 1955. Australian release: 9 February 1956. Sydney release at the Plaza. 9,161 feet. 102 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Army man infiltrates a criminal gang of former servicemen in Tokyo.NOTES: Fox's 33rd CinemaScope feature was filmed on location in Tokyo.The original movie "The Street With No Name" (1948) starred Richard Widmark and Mark Stevens in the roles now played by Ryan and Stack. Fuller tells us that "House of Bamboo" was Joe MacDonald's first color film, which of course is rubbish because MacDonald photographed the 2nd CinemaScope feature movie "How To Marry a Millionaire", as well as Fuller's own "Hell and High Water", plus "Broken Lance", "Woman's World", and "The Racers" which were all in color and all made before "House of Bamboo".COMMENT: Everyone remembers the shoot-out action climax on the whirling globe, but the rest of the film is somewhat slow-moving and disappointing. Robert Ryan give his usual over-intense performance which tends not only to dominate the movie but to throw it off- balance. Robert Stack is still too much the eager Boy Scout, Shirley Yamaguchi supplies the superfluous love interest, and the rest of the players (including Sessue Hayakawa in a small role) have equally little to contribute. Technically the film is much more interesting than either its marking-time players or its stretched-out story. Not only are the action scenes (what there are of them) forcefully staged and the Tokyo locations vividly utilized, but MacDonald and Fuller have made progress in their use of the CinemaScope screen since "Hell and High Water". Many of the frames are strikingly composed, while the lighting and color have a pleasingly rich texture, rare in this early stage of CinemaScope. (Admittedly I am looking at a 16mm CinemaScope print processed by Technicolor which could well be technically superior to the 35mm prints turned out by Fox's own DeLuxe laboratories).

Samuel Fuller's "House Of Bamboo" is a violent crime thriller which initially makes a strong impact because its visual style is so radically different to that seen in his earlier film noirs. Whilst Fuller's normal directness, lack of sentimentality and well staged action sequences are all in strong evidence, the use of cinemascope and colour photography add a new dimension and create a very fresh and stunning backdrop to the action.This movie (which is a remake of "The Street With No Name") was the first Hollywood film to be made in post-war Japan and is remarkable for how successfully it captures the splendour of the local landscape and how well it integrates its beautifully photographed location footage into a story which is quite dark.Near Mount Fuji in 1954, a military train is robbed by a bunch of criminals who steal its cargo of guns and ammunition. An American army sergeant is killed and the subsequent joint American/Japanese investigation is helped some weeks later when, after another robbery, a wounded criminal called Webber (Biff Elliot) is found with injuries caused by the same type of bullets which were used in the train robbery. Before he dies, Webber doesn't disclose the names of his accomplices who left him for dead but does mention that he has a Japanese wife called Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi).Webber had an American friend called Eddie Spanier (Robert Stack), an ex-con who turns up a little later and makes himself known to Mariko before attracting the attention of local gangster Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan). Dawson's gang is made up of ex-G.I.s and they regularly carry out robberies which are organised using military style planning. There is a rule that if any gang member gets injured during a robbery, one of the other gang members will kill him to avoid any risk of him talking if he gets caught by the police.Eddie and Mariko embark on a relationship and she lives with him as his "kimono girl". Dawson recruits Eddie into his gang and fellow gang member Griff (Cameron Mitchell) immediately becomes jealous of how close the two men become as he'd previously been Dawson's "ichiban" (number one boy).Eddie reveals to Mariko that he's actually Eddie Kenner, an undercover agent working for the military police and she subsequently acts as a go-between with Eddie's superiors. Things then get rather tense for Eddie when Dawson calls off a planned robbery when it becomes clear to him that the authorities know about it and he's determined to find and punish the informant."House Of Bamboo" features a great deal of violence with numerous people getting garroted, a few gang members getting killed and a spectacular shoot-out in a top class set piece which concludes the action. There's also a cultural rift as neither the Americans or the Japanese show any respect or appreciation of each other's cultures and Mariko is even snubbed by her neighbours because of her relationship with an American.This story of deception, betrayal and ruthless criminality is made even more entertaining by its characters and some of the interesting pairings that it features. Apart from the aforementioned apparent incongruity of a dark, gritty crime drama being played out in scenery which is light, colourful and extremely beautiful, there's also an American who has no interest in the Japanese language or culture pairing up with a Japanese woman. Dawson also provides some interest in this regard as he dumps his number one boy because he becomes attracted to Eddie.Robert Ryan's performance as the cunning psychopath is both powerful and subtle as he's seen on different occasions being menacing, less guarded when talking to Eddie and during one robbery, acting out of character by disobeying his own rules. The supporting performances are also generally good.

House of Bamboo is an exciting film by Samuel Fuller that subverts the usual visual cues of the Film Noir genre to create a strong statement about the absorption of foreign cultures by other nations in the aftermath of war.One great element of the film is the presence of Japanese culture that is imposed onto every American gesture that Eddie and Sandy and the rest of the gang go through. Shot on location, nearly all the exterior shots include the distant presence of Mount Fuji or the urban landscape of Japan presiding over all the actions of Sandy and the gang as Eddie attempts to infiltrate their ranks.Sandy initially has Eddie beaten up over his attempt to muscle in on the Pachinko rackets that the American gangsters are controlling. As it turns out Sandy's gang have many more criminal interests including robbing a shipping company, a payroll delivery service, and later a pearl merchant. The bright-color visuals of this Asian world as a backdrop for the shadowy motives of the gangster world combines with the character motives and action in the film to create quite a treat for the lover of film noir.For one thing the typical visual noir trademarks are absent. There are no dark alley ways and no wet streets, and no Femme Fatale to accompany the fatalistic sense of doom pressing down on our protagonist. What Sam Fuller has done is to use the mysterious Japanese culture during the post World War 2 period and meld it with a police crime detective story to achieve a commentary on War and the essential effect it has on a civilization as it is absorbed by a dominating culture. In the reality of the film the crime that is never fully detected is that of America's ultimate violation of the Eastern cultures. This is shown in a number of ways.Sandy and his gang are basically a crime unit working in the Asian market after the end of World War 2 and taking advantage of every opportunity through their illegal activities. That Sandy is an ex-soldier as is his entire crew and also runs them like a soldiering platoon says volumes about the presence of American capitalistic domination of the country. The fact that they are operating in the country very much side-by-side with the Japanese businessmen in the pachinko parlors confirms that this Asian country is being absorbed by a world power.Consider how Sandy and his gang confront Eddie when he visits one of the Pachinko to extort money. Griff is waiting for Eddie to make a move and steps out and punches him through a paper screen into a room where Sandy awaits. The scene is introduced as Eddie attempts to shake down a local Japanese pachinko parlor manager but as the scene progresses, the manager merely retreats into the background as the American hoods push Eddie around. It is as if this American organization exists as some independent entity within this society taking from the revenue-generating culture as some sort of post-war occupation deal.The visuals pull us away from the usual noir cues and instead point us toward a vibrant culture around which the activities of the American gangsters and the Japanese culture coexist. The scene with Robert Stack's Eddie and Yamaguchi's Mariko are ones in which the basic attraction of man and woman is bracketed by the additional obstacle of different clashing cultures. Many things come out in their relationship like the way other Japanese women treat Mariko because of her dating an American.In one scene after Mariko is shamed by other Japanese women she and Eddie spend a moment alone as she messages his neck and tells him what she finds attractive in a man. This scene could have been covered for a maximum of sensuality but Fuller shoots it with one shot, slowly moving in for emphasis and then backing away. With simple lighting that reveals everything in the room Fuller merely lets the actors carry the story as Mariko whispers into Eddie's ears that she sees his "romantic eyebrows" as very attractive. Fuller pushes in with his camera in order to create a more intimate sense in the scene. This is very different form the usual coverage of wide shot, medium and close up as dialogue peaks in a scene. By merely moving his camera closer Fuller indicates that he doesn't wants to intrude too far into this world, but prefers to keep his distance.The director uses this same technique in a later scene when Sandy goes over his armored car holdup plan in which he excludes Griff. The scene is set up over a pool table where the crime leader has set up pool cues and toy trucks to plan out his mission. When Griff gets angry and confronts Sandy Fuller only pushes his camera in to capture the full picture of the men as they group together. Fuller lets his actors have their day with the performances, but the lack of traditional cutting creates the feeling that the viewer cannot get an inside look at this world.Fuller never shows the Japanese mafia of this period and how they possibly counteract the activities of Sandy and his gang. This causes House of Bamboo to feel off-balance- I kept wondering where all the Asian criminals were. Perhaps this was too great a menu for Fuller considering his marriage of West and East in the characters of Eddie and Mariko. Regardless of the absence of the local criminals, the film still moves along at a hasty pace with plenty of action and remains captivating still.

I was pretty excited about another Fuller film after being pleasantly surprised by his first two films seen the previous week, both of which were better than their reputations. Well, everyone has their missteps and this one seems to me to be a minor and fairly pointless film from this great director. A remake of the 1948 B&W noir Street with No Name, this moves the action -- a tale of an undercover cop trying to infiltrate and ultimately take down a big crime boss -- to occupied Japan, widens the screen to 'scope format and adds bright color. Small-time hood Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) is ostensibly in Japan to make contact with an old friend who turns out to have recently been murdered, perhaps by his own organization, a pachinko parlor cartel run by Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan). Stack makes friends with the dead man's widow Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi) and worms his way into Ryan's group which of course turns out to be in business for more than just a few yen from gambling parlors.The action moves reasonably well, and the location shooting is nice (first American film made in Japan, apparently), but it just wasn't gripping to me and far too predictable; the earlier version is better as are quite a number of similar-themed films from the past few years. Worth seeing for Fuller completists, and one of his few color 'scope films, but don't expect anything on the level of Park Row or Pickup on South Street. DVD rental.