House of Bamboo
With Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi.
US, 1955, 35mm, color, 103 min.
Print source: Criterion
Assigned to remake Fox's 1948 crime film The Street With No Name, Fuller transported the story of underworld racketeers to postwar Tokyo and Yokohama and joyfully seized the challenge of filming one of the first major Hollywood productions shot on location in US-occupied Japan. House of Bamboo is a brisk and violently beautiful tale of love and betrayal made vivid by bold expressions of Fuller's signature graphic style (an assassination in an ofuro tub, a gunfight on a rooftop amusement park) and extraordinary use of iconic Japanese locations, from Mount Fuji to gaudy pachinko parlors. The twin poles of the taut drama are Robert Ryan and Robert Stack as competing versions of steely and scarred masculinity, each with a secret vulnerability flickering beneath their shells of brooding bitterness that hint at a dark past. Fuller adds a subversive element by making House of Bamboo a kind of love story between men, with the gorgeous Shirley Yamaguchi caught somewhere in between.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
The Naked Kiss
Underworld U.S.A.
The Baron of Arizona
Merrill's Marauders
House of Bamboo
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
A Fuller Life
Run of the Arrow
Street of No Return
The Steel Helmet
The Big Red One
Shock Corridor
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
