Branded to Kill

Auteur director Seijun Suzuki was pretty much the poster boy for Japanese New Wave — a post-war film movement that challenged not only film’s technical norms through unconventional and experimental editing, composition and narrative, but also Japanese social norms by including taboo subjects like sex, radicalism, and violence. Given that Branded to Kill is Suzuki’s most widely recognized masterpiece, that really makes it a defining film for the whole movement! Branded to Kill is a Tokyo pop eye-candy of a gangster film, yet also defies genre labels with equal parts comedy, violence, drama and fantasy. However, do not let Branded to Kill’s idiosyncratic qualities lead you to believe it was some sort of fluke of filmmaking. Far from it in fact. Seijun Suzuki was a very deliberate and exacting director who built his career challenging the system with each successive film, becoming more abstract and provocative as he went. Suzuki was at the top of his game when he made Branded to Kill, which makes it all the more sad to know it was the film that finally pushed the bounds too far and got him fired from Nikkatsu and more or less blacklisted in the industry. Who knows what fantastical tales Suzuki could have made if were allowed to keep making movies during this period? 🙁

At nearly 5 feet tall, Japanese B0s are one of the largest and rarest formats in Japan. Poster collecting took off earlier in Japan than in the United States, but in a space-conscious Japan a preference was put on the smallest formats like B2s and even moreso with chirashi handbills. Larger formats were typically not saved as there simply wasn’t the space available to display them. Flash forward to today and only a few of these massive Branded to Kill B0 posters have surfaced for this all-important New Wave film.