Two detectives embark on a stakeout of a young, beautiful lover of a murder suspect. They're surprised to find out how boring she is in the 1958 noir Stakeout (張込み). At turns a fascinating procedural and a melancholy rumination, the film's a really nice detective story from Studio Shochiku.
Two detectives, an elder named Shimooka (Seiji Miyaguchi) and a younger man named Yuki (Minoru Oki), follow the trail of a robbery murder suspect called Ishii (Takahiro Tamura). They travel from Tokyo southwest to Saga in Kyushu, a hot province in a hot summer.
The heat and the realism of the depiction of train travel and town life are two of the things that make the movie reminiscent of Kurosawa's Stray Dog. But I found myself thinking more of Hitchcock's Rear Window.
The detectives find a room in an inn next door to the woman's home, a perfect spot with a bird's eye view of her front yard. As the two detectives watch, the younger man, Yuki, remarks that he's surprised to find the woman is so boring. The older man, Shimooka, merely replies, "Most people are boring."
So they're interpreting what they see and drawing conclusions about how well it reflects life in general, much as one might do after watching a movie. The sense of the film commenting on the audience/film relationship is heightened by the fact that the woman, Sadako, is played by the film's biggest star, Hideko Takamine, but she hardly gets any closeups until the film's climax.
She's married to a businessman--not the murderer--who has three kids from a previous marriage. She gets along with the kids and the husband is stingy but not outright abusive. It's not truly a bad setup but Sadako certainly doesn't seem to be appreciated.
Director Yoshitaro Nomura keeps things interesting as the stakeout drags on, using the second floor inn room with its commanding view to create a number of interesting shots. The inn employees gossip both about the detectives--who've told them unconvincingly that they're travelling salesmen--and Sadako, who comes by at one point to borrow money for groceries because her husband "forgot" to give her some that morning. When action does finally strike, it's sudden and Yuki finds himself madly scrabbling back across country. Unable to send messages except for a single hasty telegram back to his partner, the film nicely stays with his POV as he struggles first with finding Sadako and Ishii and then with deciding how to handle a very sad situation, made sadder by how loveless he knows quite well her home life is.
Stakeout is available on The Criterion Channel.
Twitter Sonnet #1575
The cool of dusk provides the frozen grill.
As often times the dove will buy the snake.
There's something cracked about the human will.
They see the cut between the knife and stake.
Repeated notes were layered over frost.
A sharpened broach was stuck in frizzy hair.
The spoon in boiling soup was slowly lost.
Across the sky there rode an angry mare.
A world of boiling air denies the norm.
Routinely trains would carry blood to work.
Oppressive heat became the average warm.
Behind the bomb the grim detectives lurk.
Entrancing shade awaits in past returned.
A boiling spring in error seasons burned.
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