Zero Focus (1961)

The ideas in "Zero No Shôten" are quite interesting, but the overall film left me rather flat--mostly because the final portion of the film just seemed way too talky and drug on and on for too long.This movie begins with a young bride searching for her husband. It seems that after being married only about a week, he disappeared and his new wife refuses to let go. So, she spends a lot of time searching throughout the countryside for him but keeps coming up with nothing. Then, out of the blue, she learns that the man has killed himself--but that he was using a different name. It seems that he'd been leading double lives--and already was married. But there's more to it than this...and maybe it wasn't suicide after all...and maybe there are more victims.Around halfway through the film, the second wife starts to realize that the suicide isn't exactly as the police have determined. So far, so good. But then the film talks and talks and talks. First, the second wife explains her theory. Then, the man's mistress (yes, there is a third woman) explains what happened. It all takes a very long time and is incredibly talky--as if they need to explain the movie. It's a shame, as the first part of the film was well done--the final was unconvincing and poor.Not at all Hitchockian...though what really IS Hitchcockian? Perhaps Hitchcock's films aren't even Hitchcockian!

Teiko Uhara is a dowdy young woman delighted at finally catching the man of her dreams, Kenichi, after a whirlwind romance her and her new man marry. As Kenichi has just received another big promotion in work, he is called away immediately before they can have a proper honeymoon, he promises to be back in a few days. The days pass and there is no sign of her husband returning, Teiko contacts her husbands employers, who say he has already left for home some time previously. Teiko begins to worry for her husbands safety and decides to travel north to Kanazawa to track him down.Zero Focus is very taut thriller, that just screams of Hitchcock, the plot, the noirish visuals and even the score would all be very much at home in Hitch's repertoire. Nomura pieces together a convoluted script into a mesmerizing tale of hidden identities, murder and prostitution from which Teiko cannot escape. With only a couple of photos from her husbands belongings to go on, Teiko's investigation takes her into the snowy wastelands of the north, a slightly backward coastal area where ragged cliffs act like a magnet to those with suicidal tendencies and provide the viewer with memories of Rebecca. Its into this that quiet city girl Teiko is thrown, with these paltry clues she endeavours to unravel the tragedies of Kanazawa.

This was the first film I had seen by Nomura and constituted a major disappointment. Nomura appears to belong to the static variety of Japanese directors, preferring lingering and beautiful black and white shots over the bravura editing of contemporaries such as Seijun Suzuki or early Kurosawa. This approach really does not fit the material which is a stultifyingly dull and procedural mystery story that at no point rises above the generic, or generates any palpable tension or danger.A point of comparison would be Rebecca by Hitchcock, mostly because of its focus on coastal scenery and echoes of the past affecting a hurried marriage. But this movie lacks any of the sexual or psychological aspects that make Rebecca so interesting. Some of the dialogue and minor performances are appalling. At one point a coastguard turns to a distraught bereaved wife and advises, straightfaced, "Why don't you walk to Noto cliff, It is very beautiful and a common spot to commit suicide." How did that ever get beyond the editing suite? Even the final exposition is ridiculously forced and overlong that I was tempted to fast forward to the end of the ending. One to miss

Zero Focus plays like a bit like a semi-documentary police procedural and a bit like Rashomon. It's fast moving and seems to be well acted (sometimes it's hard to tell when the language spoken is not your native tongue). It's filled with twists and turns and should please some mystery fans. Keep in mind it is not a "thriller" - certainly not in the 2005 Blockbuster bid budget sense of the word.**SPOILER** The odd thing about the film is that you are aware that the husband is dead in the first half of the film -- and you are never led to believe that he MAY be alive (in fact, he isn't). The main thrust of the second half is finding out why/how he died (and how his brother died). Unfortunately, by the end, I didn't care. Why? Perhaps not enough character development -- I didn't feel I "knew" or really liked the characters, so I didn't care what happened to them.