Watch at Home 01.31.2025

By A Man's Face Shall You Know Him

Directed by Tai Kato
Film Movement Classics
1966
89 Minutes
Japan
Japanese
Action, Crime, Asian, Classics
Not Rated
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Korean gangsters try to take over from their Japanese counterparts in post war Japan.

Director & Cast

  • Director: Tai Kato
  • Starring: Noboru Ando
  • Starring: Ichiro Nakatani
  • Starring: Sanae Nakahara
  • Starring: Ryôhei Uchida

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Reviews

  • "Watching a Kato picture is a pure pleasure. He is so much a master of genre that he can play with the conventions with great ease and create films of superb craftsmanship and personal style. "
    Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
  • "Kato raised even routine stories of gangster revenge to dramatic heights using Ozu-esque low angles to give his characters grandeur and filming action scenes with a Kurosawa-like combination of realism and panache. But his style was ultimately his own, as were his strong, passionate heroines…who coolly dispatches male opponents with a short sword."
    Mark Schilling, Japan Times
  • "Kato himself is both forward looking yet one of the most traditional of Japanese post-war film-makers, nowhere more evident than in this movie. "
    Japan on Film
  • "It is highly compelling, dramatic and wonderful looking...."
    Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye
  • "[O]ne of the finer revisionist gangster pictures of its period, and a film that successfully traces the break point separating national guilt from personal accountability."
    Blaise Radley, FilmHounds
  • "By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him is a sprawling, gutsy account of a Korean-Japanese gang’s ruthless rise to power in 1948 Osaka and a local doctor’s unexpected opposition to the hoodlums. Told through vibrant colour cinematography and a complex series of flashbacks, Kato traces the influences of sex, violence, and racism in post-war Japan."
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