Blu-ray Film Review | Radiance

Underworld Beauty (1958) + Love Letter (1959) • Limited Edition Blu-ray [Radiance] — satisfying style & cool content from Seijun Suzuki

Thief Miyamoto hopes to help his old partner Mihara with stolen diamonds, and pianist Kusue wonders why her beloved no longer writes her love letters.

Dismissed in his day as a B-movie director and eventually dismissed, quite literally, by his bosses at Nikkatsu Studios, Seijun Suzuki has since been reappraised as one of Japan’s more relevant cinematic stylists. So, it’s great that his films are beginning to resurface, nicely cleaned up for Blu-ray release by boutique marques like Radiance who are presenting two of his early works on one welcome disc.

The off-beat yakuza thriller Underworld Beauty was his seventh movie but is sometimes considered his feature debut as it was the first to use his professional moniker, having made his first half-dozen movies as Suzuki Seitarō. His distinctive and subversive style is already evident and the themes he will…