Eizô Sugawa

Helen and her associates stage a confession play in order to remedy stuttering, but things go amiss.Read More »

Tamiko works as a live-in maid in a modest ryokan, while her bed-ridden husband, Kanji, slowly deteriorates due to a cerebral disorder. He makes her home life increasingly miserable, but Tamiko keeps up appearances. One day, Kotani, a well-to-do hotel manager visits the ryokan, is struck by Tamiko, and hints that he wants to help her to escape from her current life.Read More »

Review from The Montreal Gazette – Jan 10, 1970
BEAST ALLEY – directed by Eizo Sugawa; original Japanese version with English subtitles; at the Art Cinema

The only real beast in Beast Alley is a black and white Great Dane, who is incidental to the plot. There are, however, a lot of humans who behave in a rather beastly manner.

There’s a frustrated wife who burns her decrepit husband; an evil old man who preys on unhappy young women; a sinister villain who plays with gasoline and matches; and a host of unscrupulous, corrupt politicians and police detectives.Read More »

Quote:
A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.Read More »

Japan Society wrote:
The closest Japanese cinema ever came to the full-blown Broadway style musical, with singing and dancing on the streets of Tokyo, music by avant-garde composer and jazzman Toshiro Mayuzumi, lyrics by renowned poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, and direction by one of Toho’s most prominent “new wave” directors, Eizo Sugawa. Popular jazz drummer and actor Frankie Sakai stars in this comic version of the “industrial competition” genre: two tourism companies compete for foreign clients in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Highlighting the coming internationalization of Japan, the film dramatizes the felt tensions between tradition and modernity, the pressures of the “economic animal” lifestyle, and the energy of high economic growth.Read More »