A leading postwar Japanese film critic and theorist who co-founded the seminal film magazine Eiga Hihyo (Film Criticism) in 1957, Eizo Yamagiwa made his directorial debut with this independent feature—long thought lost until a negative was recently discovered—about a group of idle bourgeois students known as the “Roppongi Tribe” (Roppongi zoku). Depicting the resignation and nihilism of the postwar generation in the years following the Anpo Treaty conflicts through a coming-of-age narrative, Yamagiwa offers sharp criticism of the prevalent characterizations of Japan's new youth offered by Nikkatsu's taiyozoku (“Sun Tribe”) films and the New Wave at large.
젊은 양아치 신이치와 켄지는 경마장에서 손님 돈을 챙기고 도주한다. 그 도중 시게무네반 보스의 애인 유미와 우연히 알게 된다. 유미의 소개로 두 사람은 당장 그날 밤 예정된 권총 밀매 거래를 끝내고 구매자인 카지카와조에게서 권총을 강탈하는 데 쓴다. 한편, 권총 밀매인인 쿠로도 카지카와조에게서 권총을 되찾으려고 획책하고 있는데...
It tells the story of a couple who fall into a trap set up by a sinister organization. One of them is a guy who is framed for the murder of his lover. The other is a woman pick-pocket who is entrapped by the organization's schemes involving their crimes. Fate places them together, and they start to investigate the prostitution ring run by the organization...
From the king of Japanese exploitation films comes a criminal drama told in a semi-documentary fashion. The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese women. A hired assasin is betrayed by his organization, and kidnaps a woman who happens to be the girlfriend of a newspaper reporter.
Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.
