I’ve been making my way through Criterion’s recent release of the Zatoichi collection of films and have been loving every minute of it (though Adventures of Zatoichi wasn’t all that great). Last night I watched my tenth Zatoichi film, Zatoichi’s Revenge, which is probably the darkest one so far, but before I forgot I wanted to share with you the seven minute finale to Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword (1964), which is easily my favorite fight scene from the first ten films.
[amz asin=”B00EO2I6OM” size=”small”]I’ve included the scene below, and while I hope it gets you excited to check some of these out (many are available on Hulu) do realize the Blu-ray releases from Criterion include a lot more detail and visual information than you’re going to see in this clip, particularly in the darker scenes such as the moment captured in the image above.
One particular moment you may want to note comes at the 4:30 mark with a 35-second tracking shot that seems like it had an obvious influence on the hallway hammer scene in Chan-wook Park‘s Oldboy (watch here).
Check out the clip below, but yes, this is the entire ending to Flashing Sword, but damn what an ending it is. Oh, and if you’re interested, I’m tracking everything I watch this year on Letterboxd.com. f you’re interested in following along head here.
