Pale Flower

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful and enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited, and laced with a fever-dream-like score by Toru Takemitsu, this gangster romance was a breakthrough for the idiosyncratic Masahiro Shinoda. The pitch-black Pale Flower (Kawaita hana) is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.

Japan
1964
96 minutes
Black & White
2.35:1
Japanese
Spine #564

Special Features

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New video interview with director Masahiro Shinoda
Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Peter Grilli, coproducer of Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chuck Stephens

New cover by Michael Boland

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $31.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

Special Features

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New video interview with director Masahiro Shinoda
Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Peter Grilli, coproducer of Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chuck Stephens

New cover by Michael Boland

Cast & Credits

Cast

Ryo Ikebe: Muraki
Mariko Kaga: Saeko
Takashi Fujiki: Yoh
Naoki Sugiura: Aikawa
Seiji Miyaguchi: Funada
Eijiro Tono: Yasuoka
Chisako Hara: Muraki’s lover
Shinichiro Mikami: Reiji
Koji Nakahara: Tamaki
Isao Sasaki: Jiro

Credits

Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Produced by: Masao Shirai
Produced by: Shigeru Wakatsuki
Screenplay: Ataru Baba
Screenplay: Masahiro Shinoda
From the original story by: Shintaro Ishihara
Cinematography: Masao Kosugi
Production design: Shigemasa Toda
Music: Toru Takemitsu
Music: Yuji Takahashi

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Toru Takemitsu

Composer

Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, known to Western listeners predominantly as the man behind the music in such iconic movies as Woman in the Dunes and Ran, was an acclaimed classical composer and music theorist well before he became one of his country’s most reliably brilliant scorers of film. A noted musical avant-gardist in midcentury Japanese intellectual circles, as influenced by jazz as by Debussy, Takemitsu first turned to feature film composing when he was commissioned (along with Masaru Sato) to write the hip, twangy-guitar-inflected score for the Ko Nakahira youth flick Crazed Fruit (1956). It wasn’t until a few years later, though, when his friend Hiroshi Teshigahara asked him to score Teshigahara’s short debut film, José Torres (1959), that Takemitsu’s career in movies truly began. The deeply sympathetic working relationship that they discovered on that project resulted in Takemitsu’s providing the haunting, instrumentally jarring themes for virtually all of Teshigahara’s subsequent output (“He was always more than a composer,” Teshigahara would recall. “He involved himself so thoroughly in every aspect of a film—script, casting, location shooting, editing, and total sound design”). Takemitsu became a go-to guy for many other major Japanese filmmakers as well, including Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri), Akira Kurosawa (Dodes’ka-den), and Nagisa Oshima (Empire of Passion); his themes remain some of the most beautiful, spectral music ever written for the screen.