JAPANESE ARTHOUSE: "A Colt Is My Passport" (1967)

Date: Monday, August 11, 8:00 pm

Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone: (714) 285-9422

Dinner 6:30 TBD

Tickets: $9 https://thefridacinema.org/movies/a-colt-is-my-passport/

Trailer here

Director: Takashi Nomura Run Time: 84 min. Release Year: 1967

Language: Japanese

Starring: Chitose Kobayashi, Jerry Fujio, Jō Shishido, Shōki Fukae, Zenji Yamada

Equal parts Spaghetti Western, French New Wave, and hard-boiled noir, A Colt Is My Passport is the next film in our Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema series. It’s a lean, moody crime film that oozes cool. Joe Shishido (with his famously surgically enhanced cheeks) stars as a stoic gun-for-hire navigating a botched assassination, double-crosses, and a bloody standoff at the edge of town.

With stark black-and-white cinematography, stylized action, and a jazzy score, the film plays like a fusion of Jean-Pierre Melville and Sergio Leone, all filtered through the lens of late-’60s Japanese cynicism. It represents the turn in Japanese cinema from introspective postwar realism to a new wave of genre experimentation and rebellion.

Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema is a curated 12-film trip through the evolution of Japan—from the quiet post-war resilience of the 1940s all the way to the radical reinventions of the 1990s. Each Monday this July-September, we will explore a new facet of this incredible nation’s cinematic journey throughout the 20th century! All films will be presented in their original Japanese language with English subtitles!