The Betrayal

There are guitar solos and then there are guitar solos. You know, the sort of finger-bleeding epics that fill up half a vinyl record while the rest of the band just tries to keep pace. Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven, November Rain, they all revolve around one tremendous explosion of individual talent that goes on far longer than it should…yet somehow never seems long enough. Oddly enough, 1966’s The Betrayal, a fairly standard chambara film directed by Tokuzo Tanaka, ends with a similar display of virtuoso talent, only this time the song is played with a sword.

Kobuse (Raizo Ichikawa) is a loyal samurai who agrees to take the blame for a murder rap in order to spare his clan’s reputation and – although he’s unaware of the fact – protect the son of a high official. But what began as a backdoor deal turns into a death sentence. Kobuse is hunted by both clans as he bounces from town to town, plagued by guilt over the fiancé he abandoned and ashamed of the emptiness of a samurai’s oath of honor.

Based on an early Japanese silent and shot in black-and-white, Tanaka’s film opens like a throwback to the chivalrous Jidaigeki period dramas that celebrated the bushido of brotherhood among higher classes of Japanese society. But The Betrayal, like its title, flips the script to reveal a world in which “the faithless are rewarded and the faithful are punished.” Kobuse not only gets played the fool, his entire worldview is systematically dismantled. By the time the film limps toward its finale, he’s not a noble warrior anymore, just a man with nothing left but his blade and the indomitable will to live.

The final sequence runs so long it borders on the absurd. Tanaka stages a 20-minute long, non-stop slaughter but choreographs it with balletic grace and not one drop of blood. While Hong Kong wuxia films often attempted the same trick, their heroes were tireless performers whose skills bordered on the fantastic. Here, Jiro is just a bone-tired death-dealing machine, achieving a sort of spiritual transcendence through physical exhaustion. Just like that endless guitar solo, it dares you to check your watch, then wins your attention back again with another dazzling flourish.

It seems impossible that Radiance keeps introducing obscurities destined to break into any serious cinephile’s top ten, but they do! The limited-edition Blu-ray includes a well-produced visual essay by Philip Kemp that unpacks the film’s origins and influences, another quick one focused on Tanaka’s common creative tendencies, select scene audio commentary by Tom Mes and a collector’s booklet.