Black Test Car

While Ford vs. Ferrari provided a slick, entertaining view into the cutthroat tendencies of the auto industry, director Yasuza Masumura's 1962 film Black Test Car is an ugly indictment of capitalism at its worst as two rival car companies compete to rush their sports model to market, sabotaging the other at any physical, financial and moral cost.

 

An industrial espionage thriller with shades of classic film noir, Black Test Car is wonderfully stylized, pitch black in tone, and shocking in its portrayal of yakuza brutality by its "salaryman" characters, all of whom are complicit in their corporate crimes.  From bribes to beatings to sabotage, company success is portrayed as a sort of madness that leaks into every aspect of daily life.   Even our ostensible hero winds up pimping out his own fiancé, played with femme fatale appeal by Junko Kano.  

 

It's all played with the same sort of scandalous cynicism as Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, an early critique of spectacle journalism that proved all too accurate in the years to come.  But Masumura goes even further down the rabbit hole, predicting a world in which corporations compete to see who can sink the lowest.  And satire can't disguise the ugly truth that we're probably there already. 

 

The success of Black Test Car spawned a number of other "black"-inspired exposes that tried to lift the veil on social issues.  Instead of taking on corporate espionage, Masumura's follow-up, The Black Report (1963), tackles the criminal justice system itself as a naive prosecutor goes up against an experienced attorney whose client is on trial for the murder of a famous executive.  Despite a wealth of physical evidence, the prosecution's case is stymied at every turn by false testimony as witness are blackmailed or bought off with moral impunity.

 

A more traditional genre film, The Black Report becomes a courtroom drama in its second half, focusing on the building frustration of lead prosecutor Kido (Ken Utsui) whose promotion is riding on a guilty verdict.  There are a number of familiar faces here (Junko Kano gives another compelling performance as a jilted mistress) and Masumura stages scenes beautifully within the black-and-white scope compositions.  But the film can't help but feel a bit less-than compared to the overwhelming nastiness of his earlier work.

 

Arrow Video's double feature Blu-ray is one hell of an introduction to Masumura's work, looking terrific in almost every respect.   And including both films on one disc makes it a bargain for those looking to broaden their cinematic horizons.   Extras include a critical appreciation by Jonathan Rosenbaum, trailers, image galleries and collector's booklet.  You can't go wrong here.

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