Twilight Saloon

Tasogare sakaba

Japan

1955

94 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

Japanese

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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CAST Shigeru Amachi, Korema Arima, Ureo Egawa, Daisuke Katô, Ichiro Kodama, Isamu Kosugi, Takuya Miyahara, Akira Nakamura, Hitomi Nozoe, Natsuko Okazaki, Hiroshi Ono, Minoru Takada, Tetsurô Tanba, Jun Tatara, Keiko Tsushima, Eijirô Tôno, Ken Utsui, Sakutaro Yamakawa

One by one, the guests appear – a pianist, a stripper, a pachinko-playing painter, a young waitress – in this charming group portrait of Japan, situated in the timeless safety of a dusky bar. Recently refilmed with Kill Bill’s Chiaki Kurayama.

Altman, Becker and Truffaut spring to mind at various times in this lovely, strange little film. Spatially and temporally enclosed – it takes place in the eponymous saloon during half a day – the film offers a fondly observed group portrait of Japan, soon after Uchida returned from Manchuria. One by one, the regulars of the crepuscular bar appear: the pianist who dreams of becoming a composer but has disappeared from the music world after a knifing; a stripper whose man has done her wrong; an elderly painter trying to make a living at pachinko; a young waitress considering elopement. The ‘twilight’ is more than just a time of day; here, it is a state of being, a suspension between past and present, between the camaraderie of the saloon and the harsh world outside. The roaming, inquisitive camera, poignant musical numbers, and Uchida’s sympathy with the working class and downtrodden lend the film a graceful social density. The enduring charm of Twilight Saloon led to a recent remake, Take The “A” Train Someday, starring Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill. (JQ) —International Film Festival Rotterdam

Director

Tomu Uchida

Uchida Tomu was born in the city of Okayama, Okayama Prefecture on April 26, 1898 to a family of confectionary makers. After dropping out of high school and spending time as a piano tuner in Yokohama, Uchida worked on and off for the Taisho Katsuei Motion Picture Company founded in May 1920. Nicknamed Tom by his gang, he took the stage name Tomu and became an actor, also serving as an assistant director, assistant cameraman and stagehand. Uchida joined the Makino educational films (Makino Kyoikueiga Seisakusho) in Kyoto, and directed his first film Aa, Konishi Junsa (Police Officer Konishi, 1922) with Kinugasa Teinosuke; however, his innate wanderlust soon had him off traveling around Japan, mixing with the people at the bottom of the social ladder. In 1926 he went to work for Nikkatsu, making his proper directorial debut with Kyoso Mikkakan (Three Days of Competition, 1927). Following his early light comedies, Uchida went on to make the socialist leaning… read more

Uchida Tomu was born in the city of Okayama, Okayama Prefecture on April 26, 1898 to a family of confectionary makers. After dropping out of high school and spending time as a piano tuner in Yokohama, Uchida worked on and off for the Taisho Katsuei Motion Picture Company founded in May 1920. Nicknamed Tom by his gang, he took the stage name Tomu and became an actor, also serving as an assistant director, assistant cameraman and stagehand. Uchida joined the Makino educational films (Makino Kyoikueiga Seisakusho) in Kyoto, and directed his first film Aa, Konishi Junsa (Police Officer Konishi, 1922) with Kinugasa Teinosuke; however, his innate wanderlust soon had him off traveling around Japan, mixing with the people at the bottom of the social ladder. In 1926 he went to work for Nikkatsu, making his proper directorial debut with Kyoso Mikkakan (Three Days of Competition, 1927). Following his early light comedies, Uchida went on to make the socialist leaning “tendency film” Ikeru Ningyo (A Living Puppet aka A Living Doll, 1929) and the satirical comedy Adauchi Senshu (The Revenge Champion, 1931), before earning high acclaim for a succession of cinematic masterpieces with their roots in a distinctive style of realism, including Jinsei Gekijo (Theater of Life, 1936), Hadaka no Machi (The Naked Town) and Kagirinaki Zenshin (Unending Advance) both made in 1937; and Tsuchi (Earth, 1939). In 1945, Uchida traveled alone to China to join the Manchuria Film Association (Man’ei), remaining after the war as a technical advisor for Chinese cinema. In 1953 he returned to Japan and resurrected his Japanese film career with Chiyari Fuji (A Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji) made in 1955, and continued to be an enthusiastic and prolific filmmaker, mainly for Toei. After bringing to the screen the roman-fleuve novels Sword in the Moonlight (1957–59) and Miyamoto Musashi (1960-65) and moving close to the world of the classics starting with Abarenbo Kaido (The Horse Boy, 1956), Uchida released what was to become his lifelong masterpiece Kiga Kaikyo (A Fugitive from the Past, 1964), propelling him into the Japanese cinema élite. Uchida Tomu was struck down by stomach cancer during the filming of his final film Shinken Shobu (Swords of Death, 1971), and died on August 7, 1970. —Toyko FilmEx catalogue, November 2004