Friday, May 4 at 9PM and Sunday, May 6, at 4PM

     Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Umetsugu Inoue’s first film with Yujiro Ishihara, The Winner tells the story of a punk kid who tries boxing as a lark, gets the tar punched out of him and starts training for real. His manager is a former contender who sees the boy as way to realize a championship dream that he himself could never fulfill.

Inspired by the 1948 classic The Red Shoes, Inoue added a subplot about an up-and-coming ballerina who falls in love with the boxer. Her graceful solo dance, presented in a thirteen-minute cut, with a young Akira Kobayashi as a transfixed spectator is one of the film’s highlights.

Another high point is the climatic fight scene that Inoue filmed with more than two hundred cuts over four days. To save time and money, he shot the entire scene from one side, changing the colors of the two corners to create the illusion that the action was unfolding in 360 degrees. Ishihara’s opponent was a former champion boxer, but Ishihara, blessed with athletic ability and quick hands, gave as good as he got.

The Winner lived up to its name at the box office and proved, to Inoue’s satisfaction at least, that Ishihara could carry a film. (The studio bosses would need a bit more convincing.) It also established the template—action with musical interludes—for dozens of Nikkatsu films to come. – Adapted from Mark Schilling in Asia Sings! A Survey of Asian Musical Films.
Directed by Umetsugu Inoue. With Yujiro Ishihara, Mie Kitahara, Keiji Itami

Japan 1957, DCP, color, 98 min. Japanese with English subtitles

Curated by Tom Vick and generously funded by the Inoue & Tsukioka Movie Foundation.
Special thanks: Sabrina Baracetti, Thomas Bertacche, Roger Garcia and Mark Schilling—the Far East Film Festival, Udine, Italy and the National Film Archive of Japan, Tokyo.