Directed by Seijun Suzuki • 1963 • Japan
Starring Joe Shishido, Misako Watanabe, Tamio Kawaji

When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo’s underworld explodes with violence. YOUTH OF THE BEAST (YAJU NO SEISHUN) was a breakthrough for director Seijun Suzuki, introducing...

Directed by Carol Reed • 1947 • United Kingdom
Starring James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Robert Newton

Taking place largely over the course of one tense night, Carol Reed’s psychological noir, set in an unnamed Belfast, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con leading a robbery that goes horribly ...

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier • 1981 • France
Starring Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Marielle

An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel POP. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier’s COUP DE TORCHON deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief turned heartless killer and his...

Directed by Seijun Suzuki • 1960 • Japan

At the beginning of Seijun Suzuki's taut and twisty whodunit, a prison truck is attacked and a convict inside murdered. The penitentiary guard on duty, Daijiro (Michitaro Mizushima), is accused of negligence and suspended, only to take it upon himself to ...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • 1962 • Japan
Starring Jitsuko Yoshimura, Yoko Minamida, Hiroyuki Nagato

A dazzling, unruly portrait of postwar Japan, PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS details, with escalating absurdity, the desperate power struggles between small-time gangsters in the port town of Yokosuka. Sho...

Directed by Takumi Furukawa • 1964 • Japan

Fresh out of the slammer, Togawa (Branded to Kill's rough-and-ready Joe Shishido) has no chance to go straight because he is immediately coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing a heist on an armored car carrying racetrack receipts. After assemblin...

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi • 1956 • Japan

Perhaps Masaki Kobayashi's most sordid film, BLACK RIVER examines the rampant corruption on and around U.S. military bases in Japan following World War II. Kobayashi spirals out from the story of a love triangle that develops between a good-natured stu...

Directed by Alan Rudolph • 1985 • United States
Starring Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine, Lori Singer

In a down-and-out corner of Rain City—a mysterious, moody metropolis that seems to exist partly in the future, partly in the past—a collection of social cast-offs are drawn together by fate,...

Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara • 1960 • Japan

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. The marvelously moody Intimidatio...

Directed by Yoshitaro Nomura • 1958 • Japan
Starring Minoru Oki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Hideko Takamine

When a pair of a detectives lose the trail of a murder suspect, they camp out across the street from his ex-lover (Hideko Takamine) in hopes that she will lead them to their man. It’s the beginning ...

Directed by Wim Wenders • 1977 • Germany
Starring Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz

Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with THE AMERICAN FRIEND, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel “Ripley’s Game.” Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American a...

Directed by Yoshitaro Nomura • 1961 • Japan
Starring Yoshiko Kuga, Hizuru Takachiho, Ineko Arima

After her husband disappears on a business trip, newlywed Teiko (Yoshiko Kuga) realizes she knows very little about the man she has been married to for only a week. With a pair of mysterious photogra...

Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara • 1957 • Japan

In Koreyoshi Kurahara's directorial debut, rebel matinee idol Yujiro Ishihara (fresh off the sensational Crazed Fruit) stars as a restaurant manager and former boxer who saves a beautiful, suicidal club hostess (Mie Kitahara) trying to escape the clu...

Directed by Toshio Masuda • 1958 • Japan

Rusty Knife was the first smash for director Toshio Masuda, who would go on to become one of Japanese cinema's major hit makers. In the film, Yujiro Ishihara and fellow top Nikkatsu star Akira Kobayashi play former hoodlums trying to leave behind a life o...