Japanese director Tomu Uchida directed 70 films over a career that spanned nearly 50 years. The crowning moment of Uchida’s legendary career would come in 1965 with the release of the epic crime drama, A Fugitive from the Past. On September 27, Arrow brings this stunning masterpiece to home video outside of Japan for the first time.
In 1947, a freak typhoon sends a passenger ferry running between Hokkaido and mainland Japan plunging to the ocean depths, with hundreds of lives lost. During the chaos, three men are witnessed fleeing a burning pawnshop in the Hokkaido port town of Iwanai. The police suspect theft and arson, and when Detective Yumisaka (Junzaburo Ban) discovers the burned remains of a boat and the corpses of two men, he sets about tracking the shadowy third figure. Meanwhile, the mysterious Takichi Inukai (Rentaro Mikuni) takes shelter with a prostitute, Yae (Sachiko Hidari), a brief encounter that will come to define both of their lives. A decade later, long after the trail has gone cold, Yumisaka is called back by his successor Detective Ajimura (Ken Takakura) as two new dead bodies are found.
A Fugitive from the Past was shot in gorgeous monochrome photography that delivers a grittiness that imitates newsreels of the day. This cinematography coupled with Uchida’s use of postwar Japanese landscapes helps create a crime drama that touches on the massive social upheaval and unspoken legacies of the war that was still fresh on everyone’s mind.
An adaptation of Tsutomu Minakami’s 1700-page novel, A Fugitive from the Past is one of the most popular and critically esteemed films in all of Japanese cinema. Kinema Junpo, Japan’s oldest film magazine with origins dating back to 1919, has repeatedly heaped praise upon the film. In 1995, the magazine declared A Fugitive from the Past to be the 6th greatest Japanese film ever made. Three years later in 1999, the magazine bumped the film up to number three.
Arrow’s Blu-ray release features a restored 183-minute-long cut of the film with the original uncompressed mono audio. Special features include an introduction by writer and curator Jasper Sharp, scene-specific commentaries from leading Japanese film scholars, the original theatrical trailer, and more. First pressings of the release include a fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by David Baldwin and Inuhiko Yomota.
