Cinemasparagus: 0-Line Stowaway

Thursday, August 09, 2018

0-Line Stowaway

Hong Kong Smuggled Pieces

(All images are iPhone photos taken of frames of the film playing off the Arrow Blu-ray.)

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This is the story of the directed-by-Seijun Suzuki 0-Line Stowaway [Mikkō 0 Line, 1960]. —

Katori (Hiroyuki Nagato) works as an investigative reporter for the Kyōkuto Shinbun.

The 0-Line is the ship that runs between Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Katori's friend Nishina (Yūji Kodaka) is a less intrepid, less five-o'-clock, less thumb-in-the-sternum investi活火山 for rival paper the Nitto Shinbun.

Katori set up Reiko Saeki (Sanae Nakahara) for drug-trafficking. His stock-in-trade is the set-up. After Reiko it's her brother, or husband, or something, Katori's and Nishina's classmate, in a bust. When the 'force' rains down in pursuit he chomps his own tongue and dies instantly from blood-loss!

Journalists in Suzuki act like police, keisatsu with impunity.

Another man nabbed at Yaesu bites off his (own) tongue, as well.

Katori's sister Sumiko (Mayumi Shimizu) announces baseball games.

Sōmei Ryū (actor unknown?) heads a trading company. His goons beat hell out of Katori.

This woman mutters, "His strength's no match for your violent power."

You won't believe it but Akiko Sugie's been found dead in Hong Kong of murder or suicide, and her passport hadn't been issued, so — this means she was smuggled.

One challenge in Suzuki is for the viewer to take these convoluted broken-wings of scenarios as filmed and fly and turn them into their own (perceived) movie.

Nishina reads in the newspaper Katori has gone missing. Nishina goes into the semi-demimonde to find a boat to sneak him to Hong Kong. He makes the arrangements. His editor approves; he'll carry a concealed passport.

He manages his way onboard the vessel posing as a Chinese national. A party's raging in the lower quarters; it's American G.I.s and female Japanese sex-slaves.

Nishina's exposed. Thrown to the brig, he encounters Katori imprisoned makeshift too on the boat's lower coal deck. Nishina pummels Katori, then they align. The duo trigger the ship's fire alarms. Police arrive at the craft, still docked. Reiko Saeki tells Katori that Sōmei Ryū is her father. She shoots him in the calf, assuming Katori will never let her or her father get away free.

The cops were summoned by Nishina and Katori via Morse code by way of a torn electrical cable dabbed against a steel pipe in the coal hold. •

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