I Am Waiting (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I Am Waiting (1957) – K. Kurahara

Film noir, as a genre with fuzzy boundaries, really did sweep the world – with its roots in pulp fiction (e.g., Dashiell Hammett), it overtook Hollywood in the Forties and Fifties (and continues to this day, but is usually called “neo-noir”).  Ore wa matteru ze (“I am waiting”) is a perfect example of how the genre’s tropes were cut-and-paste into another culture – perhaps it makes sense for Japan to have captured it so well, given the influence that America had at that time (see also Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, 1949).  In this film, the protagonist (Yûjirô Ishihara) is an ex-boxer who retired after killing a man (in a bar fight).  He dreams of following his brother to Brazil to become a farmer, but he just needs to raise the dough (in his own bar/restaurant).  One night, he “rescues” a mysterious trench-coated woman (Mie Kitahara) who was drenched by the rain – she’s in trouble with a bunch of hoodlums, led by a fedora wearing club owner, of course.  (You can see some parallels to Melville’s French version of noir that takes place in similar settings here). One thing leads to another, and it turns out the brother in Brazil never actually made it there – and the club-owner and his henchman are somehow involved.  Director Koreyoshi Kurahara employs many of the clichés of the genre but they feel fresh enough in this different cultural milieu; in Hollywood, this might just be another run-of-the-mill picture in the crowded field of noir. The director went on to more confrontational material in the future (e.g., The Warped Ones, 1960).