"House of Bamboo" Review

 

by Daniel White

Film being a collaborative art form, rarely does one person exert complete control over the entire project. However, there are a handful of directors who are master-craftsmen, and you can be assured when their name is attached to a movie, their influence will be considerable, and the end result inevitably worth watching.

Samuel Fuller is one of those directors and House of Bamboo (1955) another first-rate film by an artist of rare talent. This guy never disappoints!

Set in Tokyo, a decade after the war ended, it's a hard-bitten story about an American gang leader (Robert Ryan) and the G.I. (Robert Stack) who goes undercover to bring him to justice. Produced by Twentieth Century Fox in CinemaScope, the movie looks gorgeous, courtesy of cinematographer Joseph MacDonald. A heady combination of beauty and brutality, the flick is bathed in cool, impersonal (Pacific?) blues. The calming color dominates and misleads, complementing the violence perfectly. As Chinatown would demonstrate two decades later, color, when handled correctly, can be just as effective in film-noir as B&W.

Does anyone embody the smooth-talking sociopath better than Robert Ryan? Here as Sandy Dawson, the calculating gangster, he has one of his best roles. Measured and menacing, he is perfectly cast. Ryan brings to mind another gifted actor, Dan Duryea, who was also adept at playing homicidal whack-jobs. Conversely, both were devoted family men in their personal lives.

The other Robert Stack, does a serviceable job as the infiltrating army sergeant determined to expose Ryan, and he certainly fills out his battered trenchcoat nicely. But for me, House of Bamboo is all about Sam Fuller, Joseph MacDonald and Robert Ryan.

Filmed on location in Tokyo, the film offers a fascinating glimpse into what the city looked like, ten years in since the end of the war. With Shirley Yamaguchi as Stack's "kimono", and Cameron Mitchell as Ryan's disgruntled second-in-command, an ichiban with a chip on his shoulder, House of Bamboo is available on YouTube in glorious Deluxe Color.