Yasuzō Masumura — Director (40)
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Movie

Superexpress (1964) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
黒の超特急
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Jirō Tamiya / Yukiko Fuji …
other title: Le Train super-express noir / 黒の超特急 …
A man operates a small real estate business near Osaka. A man from Tokyo asks for help in buying a large tract of land in order, he says, to build an automobile factory. But by accident the realtor learns that the Tokaido Railway Line is going to be built directly across the land just acquired. Also known as Black Super Express
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Movie

Vixen (1969) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
女体
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Ruriko Asaoka / Eiji Okada …
other title: Indagine su una ninfomane / 女体 …
Michi's first encounter with Nobuyuki Ishida, secretary to the chairman of a private school, takes place in the drawing room, when she attempts to swindle him out of two million yen for alleged rape by his son. Akie, Ishida's wife and the chairman's daughter, offers her a million, but he gives her what she demands. Now Michi is not only satisfied, but she has a mad desire for Ishida and calls him every day asking for a date. His sympathy for her gradually evolves into love, and he soon allows her insatiable passion to strip him of his decency.
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Movie

An Ode to Yakuza (1970) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
やくざ絶唱
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Shintarō Katsu / Naoko Ohtani …
other title: Ode Au Yakuza / やくざ絶唱 …
Tatematsu Minoru, a yakuza belonging to the Ishikawa group that runs the Shinjuku area, has a beautiful sister named Akane. He dreams of sending her to college and turning her into a perfect young lady. He's extremely fond of Akane. His fondness for her goes beyond how he feels about his mistress, Kanae. And yet, Akane feels alone. Now, a new tutor comes into her life that seems to have taken a liking to her...
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Movie

Two Wives (1967) IMDb TMDB NeoDB
妻二人
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Ayako Wakao / Mariko Okada …
other title: Deux épouses / Two wives …
After a random encounter at a bar, two couples collide. Two men, two women, embroiled in a love-and-hate drama that threatens to engulf them. The sexual anxiety between the interwoven couples tautens right up to the nearly unbearable tension of the climax...
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Movie

Double Suicide of Sonezaki (1978) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
曽根崎心中
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Meiko Kaji / Ryudo Uzaki …
other title: Double suicide à Sonezaki / Doble suicidio en Sonezaki …
Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.
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Movie

New Hoodlum Soldier Story: Firing Line (1972) IMDb TMDB Douban NeoDB
新兵隊やくざ 火線
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Shintarō Katsu / Takahiro Tamura …
other title: 新兵隊やくざ 火線 / 新军中黑道：火线. …
The story is presented as a voiced-over narrative by Arita (Takahiro Tamura), speaking long after the events of the film. In a remote army base in Manchuria, near the Soviet border, long-serving corporal Arita hates the military and looks forward to the day he may leave. Although a university graduate, he has several times deliberately failed the exam for promotion and thus remains a corporal after four years' service.
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Akumyo: Notorious Dragon (1974) IMDb TMDB Douban NeoDB
悪名 縄張荒らし
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Shintarō Katsu / Kinya Kitaoji …
other title: 悪名 縄張荒らし / Bad Reputation: Notorious Dragon …
About small-time gangster Asakichi's chaotic life in the 1930s. His gambling addiction means that he must not continue working in the family business. Instead he supports himself by arranging cockfights. He becomes ex-geisha Okinu's patron and lover, and falls directly into disfavor with the yakuza.
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Movie

Lullaby of Death (1982)
この子の七つのお祝いに
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Shima Iwashita / Jinpachi Nezu …
other title: この子の七つのお祝いに / 祝女儿7岁生日快乐 …
Also known as: For My Daughter's 7th Birthday. Many years following her mother’s suicide, Maya seeks out her father, who deserted them, for revenge. All intertwined with the investigation of journalists into local murders, the manipulations of a palmist known as the “blue moth”, and political corruption.
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Movie

The School of Spies (1966) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
陸軍中野学校
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Raizō Ichikawa / Mayumi Ogawa …
other title: L’école militaire de Nakano / La escuela de espías de Nakano …
Nakano Institution is the so-called ‘Spy School’ where many young men are trained to be excellent spies. They erase their names, families, even lovers to bury themselves in training. Jiro, one of the cadets, successfully seize the secret code of English army to pass the final exam. However, he reaches the crossroad when his fiancee Yukiko turns out to be a spy of the enemy.
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Movie

Play It Cool (1970) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
でんきくらげ
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Mari Atsumi / Yūsuke Kawazu …
other title: La Méduse électrique / でんきくらげ …
This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.
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Movie

A Woman's Testament (1960)
女経
director: Kon Ichikawa / Yasuzō Masumura … actor: Ayako Wakao / Hitomi Nozoe …
other title: 女経 / Jokyo …
The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and who falls in love with a forger.
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The Most Valuable Wife (1959)
最高殊勲夫人
director: Yasuzō Masumura actor: Ayako Wakao / Hiroshi Kawaguchi …
other title: 最高殊勲夫人
Kyoko is the third daughter of the Nonomiya family, a very ordinary family. Momoko, the eldest daughter, is married to Ichiro, the president of Mihara Shoji, and Riko, the second daughter, is married to Jiro, the managing director, and they plot to marry Kyoko to Saburo, the third son of the Mihara family. Kyoko is angry at the marriage talk that is being pushed forward without her permission, and declares that she "definitely won't get married," but before she knows it, she begins to become aware of the other person...