Suzuki's style grew more eccentric over time, and his most famous works – including the yakuza films Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967) – are known for their surrealistic irreverence. After Branded to Kill, however, the studio, which was under economic downtime, fired him for "making films that didn't make any sense and didn't make any money." Despite successfully suing Nikkatsu for the firing, Suzuki was effectively blacklisted from making films in Japan for almost twenty years. Eventually he was able to direct Yumeji (1991), and recently remade Branded to Kill as Pistol Opera (2001), with Esumi Makiko replacing Shishido Jo as the number 3 killer.
Suzuki, who turned 80 last May, directed at least 40 quickie features at the Nikkatsu studio between 1956 and 1967 -- practically all of them B films in the original sense of that term, meaning features designed to accompany A pictures.
A Suzuki support group was duly formed, and Suzuki sued the studio, as he later put it, "to protect my dignity." A full decade would pass before he directed another theatrical feature, and he never returned to Nikkatsu.
Suzuki's protracted hiatus from filmmaking may be partly responsible for the sense of manic overdrive.
A filmography of SeijunSuzuki is included at the end of this essay.
On a micro level, Suzuki invites his audience to view his movies in apparently unstructured blocks or collages, but on a macro level, his pictures are fulfilments, epiphanies, and yes, prophecies of a kind.
Suzuki's sense of humour seeps through his use of music in the pop-ballad style, as with the irresistable "Ballad of the Tokyo Drifter", Tetsu's theme song that he himself sings in the snow before springing into action.
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