The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 11-17
Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Released well after its maker had taken leave of such trivialities as narrative cohesion, this deconstructed gem functions more as a collection of tropes than a story: a hood trying to go straight, doomed molls, rival hitmen and blind, misplaced loyalty. Suzuki warps everything through a Pop Art prism to produce a mad jumble of hyperchromatic images of Day-Glo suns and blown-out black and white. Tasked by fed-up executives to keep the film simple and short, the director kept the running time by eliminating any footage that might have made any sense of what remains. Jake Cole (November 13, 3pm, 7pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Action and Anarchy: The Films of Seijun Suzuki”)