The Hidden Profile / 風の視線 / Kaze no shisen (‘Gaze of the Wind’, 1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #181

Shima Iwashita
 

Keisuke Sonoi
 

Natsui (Keisuke Sonoi)is a photographer who has just entered into an arranged marriage with Chikako(Shima Iwashita). Their honeymoon is an awkward flop, but during the tripNatsui discovers the body of a suicide victim, grabs his camera and snaps awaywith ghoulish gusto.  He later uses thephotos in an exhibition which is a big hit. 

 

Michiyo Aratama
 Akira Yamanouchi

Keiji Sada

Natsui is actually inlove with Ayako (Michiyo Aratama), but not only is she married to the mostly-absentShigetaka (Akira Yamanouchi), but she’s in love with Kuze (Keiji Sada), withwhom she’s having an affair, and who is also married and having an affair with a clingy bar hostess. It graduallyemerges that Ayako was the one who arranged the marriage between Natsui andChikako, partly to get Natsui to stop pestering her, but also because she knewthat Chikako was having an affair with Shigetaka …

 

 

Perhaps it wassomebody’s sly joke that this adaptation of a 1961 novel by Japan’sbest-selling mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto begins with the discovery of abody but turns out to be a romantic drama rather than a crime story. A Shochikuproduction directed by Yoshiro Kawazu, who made the previously-reviewed Eyes of a Child (1955), it also featuresa rather stiff cameo by Seicho Matsumoto himself as a writer Kuze runs into ina bar. 

 

Seicho Matsumoto and Keiji Sada
 

The plot features a coupleof unlikely and fairly pointless coincidences and in this case the level ofsuspense is mild to say the least. Despite a promising cast, nobody gets achance to do their best work here, while composer Chuji Kinoshita simply seizesthe opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Toshiro Mayuzumi and Sei Ikenoand experiment with a musical saw for no good reason. A story concerning such abizarre web of intertwined relationships might have worked as a farcical blackcomedy, but the film takes itself far too seriously and plods leadenly on toits contrived conclusion, making it hard to regard it as anything other than a competentfailure. 

 

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

English subtitles courtesy of Coralsundy can be found here.