As the legend goes, Toshiro Mifune and Shintaro Katsu swore at some point to appear together in a film. Both were gigantic film stars, Mifune thanks to his iconic roles in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, Katsu thanks to his Zatoichi films, and a concerted appearance in a movie would almost certainly result in a giant box office success.
That was undoubtedly the reasoning behind Inagaki's casting of the two superstars in Incident At Blood Pass, together with the female lead Ruriko Asaoka who was a major film star at the time as well (she appeared in a staggering 121 films between 1955 and 1967). Inagaki's career was already flailing, securing financing for his jidaigeki movies was tuff, and the Japanese film industry in general was feeling the box office competition from imported Hollywood fare. Shochiku, Toho and Nikkatsu had to deal with increasing financial woes. In the mid-1970's, the share of ticket sales for domestic movies fell under 50%. The once glorious Japanese film industry was in a deep crisis.
Assembling a star ensemble and getting Mifune to reprise his role as Yojimbo for one last time, then, seemed like a good strategy to get Incident At Blood Pass greenlit by the studio. The resulting film has somewhat of a bad rep because it is billed as a swordplay film and has next to no sword play to offer. Fans of Yojimbo and Zatoichi hoping for a sort of super sword fighting adventure may not find a lot to like here, but Incident At Blood Pass is a very interesting film in which Inagaki varied some tropes of his former work and constructs a carefully balanced script that should be studied by everyone interested in the craft.
Where Inagaki built his characters with a lot of intricacy in Samurai Trilogy and The Rickshaw Man, the characters in Incident At Blood Pass are nothing more than basic types, simple caricatures. Yojimbo doesn't get any new coloring, we have the archetype of the husband who beats his wife, the woman who submits herself to the hero, the old man who owns an inn, the rogue who tries to stay in the shadows, the hysterical police officer, the good-hearted crook, and the asshole villain. We get a little bit of backstory for some of the characters, most importantly Gentetsu the villain played by Katsu, but it is ultimately of no real importance to the movie.
What Inagaki does do with great precision, however, is to construct the situation in which all of the characters find themselves in. Just what is the titular "incident at blood pass"? We don't know until late in the film. And by that time the fate of every single character depends on the actions of someone else so that no one is in full control of their own life anymore. The movie is divided into two uneven sections: a longer one in which we don't know what is going to happen and in which the characters only make allusions to their past or what their intentions are, and a shorter more action packed section in which we finally learn what is going on and in which the focus shifts from the character's past to the immediate future.
In the first part, Inagaki leaves the audience in the dark about almost everything that's happening. Yojimbo gets an order to travel to Sanshun pass where something will happen at some point. His employer never reveals the nature of that "something". Along the way, Yojimbo picks up a woman who is beaten by her husband. Here, we don't know why or how long it has been going on. At an inn not far from Sanshun pass, where most of the film's action takes place, we meet the old owner and his daughter, as well Gentetsu who claims to be a doctor. We don't know what his relationship is with the owner and why he is living there in a shed behind the inn. Later, an officer appears with a crook he just apprehended. But we never know what the arrestee did. There is also Yataro, a gambler who teams up with Yojimbo at several occasions, but his motivations are kept in the dark for most of the time as well.
It is this first section of the movie that is most commonly criticized, as not much happens. Inagaki patiently moves the pieces on the chessboard until he has everyone where he needs them to be. The director is not known to be a superior visual auteur, but his compositions here complement beautifully the fractured nature of the character's interactions. In wide shots expertly employing depth of field, he arranges the characters on two or more different planes, thus slicing up the screen horizontally. When two characters have a hushed conversation or have a more intimate exchange, he captures it in a prolonged medium shot. Cuts on action are prevalent but not always used, as Inagaki delicately stages his shots. In one instance, the officer squats down next to the crook and tries to get a confession out of him. The camera films them both in profile, then slowly travels around them on a half circle. At the 90 degree mark, the officer stands up and squats down on the other side of the crook, so that, when the camera completes its 180 degree traveling, the characters remain in the same position as they were in the beginning of the shot, now simply mirrored. This is not an innovative technique, of course, but it shows that Inagaki is a commanding director and employs visual language that enhances or complements the plot.
Once we know what the "incident" is, the uncertainty shifts from the character's past to the future. As it turns out, Gentetsu has a plan to rob gold from a convoy posing as simple travelers. And Yojimbo was sent there to work with Gentetsu. Having formed some bonds with the people at the inn who are now held captive by Gentetsu, he is asked to work with the enemy and kill everyone at the inn. There is a certain element of unpredictability in the air because Mifune's character is so ill-defined that there was a part of me who thought that he really could kill the individuals he just spend half of the film protecting. But in the end, the denouement is both more confusing and more bland than the film lets on. But by that point, it was just a joy to observe how Inagaki's story chess moves finally paid off, even if the climax isn't very convincing.
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