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After the Occupation (House of Bamboo), the war at home. A Little Tokyo murder, the stripper (Gloria Pall) towering in the cutout display and sprawled on the pavement. A pair of detectives on the case, the diffident aesthete (James Shigeta) and the square-jawed ladies man (Glenn Corbett), combat buddies, roommates, blood brothers. "Oriental artwork" points the way, the title is a portrait made by the USC coed (Victoria Shaw) providing the main lead in the investigation. Both men fall for her, their bond frays before paranoia and prejudice, one couple gives way to another. Barbed and delicate, Samuel Fuller's pulp humanism in full flower: "Love is like a battle. Somebody has to get a bloody nose." American-Japanese or Japanese-American or what have you, the sensitive soul suspended between cultures and getting unresolved tensions from both sides, he finally explodes during a kendo match. ("Unfinished" is his critique of the heroine's canvas.) He gets the girl and loses the pal, whose look might be bigotry or "normal, healthy, jealous hate." Different worlds within a city, navigating them is the racy veteran muralist, paint-speckled and bourbon-soaked in Anna Lee's rich pirouette. Fuller themes going back to I Shot Jesse James and The Steel Helmet, explored with a camera that glides during romantic confessions and thwacks during poolroom scuffles. The criminal MacGuffin allows for striking location filming, documentary glimpses of Buddhist temples and Nisei memorials, then a baroque high-angled view of the conflicted hero on the street dwarfed by his looming shadow. (Melville in Deux hommes dans Manhattan evinces a stylistic-spiritual affinity.) At the center of the swirling parade lies the simple happy ending of an interracial kiss, "you can't fight a natural feeling." With Paul Dubov, Jaclynne Greene, Neyle Morrow, Pat Silver, and George Yoshinaga. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |