The Glamorous Ghost

Ghost In The Machine / I Bury The Living (?)

A jealousy and cuckolded husband “kills” his wife and then, in a macabre farce, carries her around in a hearse to extort money from her former lovers, but not everything is as it seems...

1964 was a remarkable year, which saw the release of this curious work by Hajime Sato:
It came after the untimely death of the master Ozu (which, incidentally, also coincided with the retirement from the screen of the extraordinary Setsuko Hara) and the release of interesting works that, curiously, also arrived in Italy:
Among the many, Teshigahara’s beautiful “Woman In The Dunes” (often shown on TV) as well as Suzuki's “The Flower And The Angry Waves” and “Gate Of Flesh” (among my favourites by the master), Masumura's ‘Manji’ (another personal favourite of mine), Shindo Kaneto's ‘Onibaba’, as well as works by Imamura, Honda, Shinoda, Naruse (who has been criminally ignored here for decades!) etc.

‘Sanpo Suru Reikyusha’ by Sato, known internationally as ‘The Glamorous Ghost’, also arrives in Italy but is released with a completely different title (a practice that is, alas, widely abused...) and becomes, for some reason, ‘L’ Amore scotta a Yokohama’, something like ‘Love Burns in Yokohama’…
But why, as many have pointed out, is the action set in Tokyo, what does Yokohama have to do with it?
Who knows!

Although difficult to categorise, but well analysed on various websites that have discussed it over the years, the movie can be considered a black comedy with a grotesque atmosphere, with decidedly surreal touches and some concessions to the macabre that place it, with considerable freedom, in the so-called “Ero guro” genre, with all that this entails…

Decidedly ambiguous in structure and morally cruel in its portrayal of the characters—all of whom are deeply unlikeable—the film truly seems like an allegory, or rather, as is often the case in many works from the Land of the Rising Sun, a parable about the destructive power of money which, when all is said and done, always leads to ruin due to greed and cupidity.

One of the film's greatest strengths is its ability to bring out the worst traits in all of its characters, who are largely devoid of humanity and feelings, driven by the murkiest of impulses, greed for wealth, coldfinancial calculation and abuse of power, taken to the extreme.

If the characterisation of the taxi driver husband (Kō Nishimura, with his extraordinary career) is a mediocre figure, lacking in scruples and moral integrity, ready to adapt and exploit the various twists and turns of the situation, he does not present any positive characteristics, his wife (Masumi Harukawa, also a veteran actress) is no less impressive, a treacherous double-crosser who coldly and lucidly exploits her (arguably questionable) attractiveness not for exclusive physical satisfaction, but purely for the desire to get rich...

And the supporting figures who gradually appear throughout the story are no less (obnoxiously) remarkable.

A grotesque comedy of errors, ‘The Glamorous Ghost’ inevitably ends up being compared to ‘The Comedy of Terrors’, one of the last movies by the great Jacques Tourneur, which coincidentally came out just a year earlier. Tourneur’s movie, it must be said, is certainly not unforgettable, revealing its main strength in its excellent and entertaining cast.

This work by Sato, a director perhaps hastily placed in marginal categories of Japanese cinema, on the contrary, thanks to remarkable black and white photography that increases the contrasts between light and shadow, contributing to amplifying the caricatural effect on the characters, his skewed, distorting shots, and moments of amusing surreal comedy (such as the trips in the hearse and the visit to the morgue with all the corpses awaiting burial) is still appreciated today, thanks to its somewhat macabre, undoubtedly unconventional taste, which may not be to everyone's liking, but certainly a faithful reflection of contemporary society, where everything seems to be driven by money and selfishness and where no redemption seems possible, as can also be inferred from the mockingly ironic ending.
7

Read More