Umi no shobushi
Gambler in the Sea
- Release Date
- July, 1st, 1961
- Running Time
- 92 min
- Genre
- Feature
- Color
- Color
- Screening Format
- -
- Screen Size
- Cinema Scope (1:2.35)
[ Directed by ]
[ Cast ]
[ Staff ]
- YAMADA Nobuo ── Screenplay
- MAMIYA Yoshio ── Cinematography
- YOSHIDA Kazuo ── Lighting
[ Production Company ]
NIKKATSU
[ Distributor (Japan) ]
NIKKATSU
[ Story ]
Joe, a deep-sea diver, is persuaded by Gosuke and Sankichi to join in a treasure-hunt for a smuggling vessel which sank when pursued by a patrol boat off Oshima. The story recalls in Joe's mind the strange sinking of a ship two years before off Kyushu. He had been engaged in salvaging the ship together with Kitagawa, when it blew up underwater he was wounded and Kitagawa was killed. Joe was branded a coward "who forsook his partner."
On board the ferry to Oshima are Gosuke and Sankichi, Chiyomatsu, a diver drowning himself in alcohol, and Kyoko, who has been following Joe for the past two years.
At Oshima, Joe hires Ichirota, a young boy to be his guide, but the boy disappears, his money is gone and he is lost. Suddenly he meets a wide-eyed, sensual woman who leads him on a wild-goose chase until he is exhausted. Night falls and Joe knocks on the door of a lonely farm-house which turns out to be the home of Maki, the elusive woman of that afternoon. Ichirota turns out to be her younger brother.
Maki consents to his spending the night there, and he learns that Kitagawa was Ichirota's elder brother.
In the meantime, Gosuke and Sankichi, tired of waiting for Joe, hire Chiyomatsu to do the job, but weakened by alcohol, he fails. That night Joe picks a fight with Chiyomatsu during which a wound mark is exposed.
"So you're the coward," shouts Chiyomatsu, "who killed your partner! "
Some days later, Joe accepts a job to survey under-water currents, and he decides to make the descent in a simple skin-diver's equipment.
Hearing of Joe's assignment, Kyoko pleads with Maki to lend him her brother's diving-suit, frantically trying to convince her that Joe did not kill her brother. Finally convinced, Maki and Ichirota load the diving-suit on a wagon and they speed toward the port.
Joe finally reaches the sunken ship with his flimsy skin-diving outfit and finds the cabin filled with the corpses of foreign refugees. When Joe feels his lungs are about to burst, Chiyomatsu, clad in full diving equipment, comes to his rescue.
Komori and his gang, together with the hired killer who dynamited the vessel that killed Kitagawa are watching for the two to surface. After a narrow escape, Joe reaches the pier - but the final show-down with the gangsters awaits Joe on the sandy slopes of the Oshima desert.
【Quoted from the database of Nikkatsu Corporation】
【Quoted from Unijapan Film Quarterly 1961.4.4】
[ Contact (International) ]
Nikkatsu Corporation
International Sales
3-28-12 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033
Attn: KAWAI Emico, SUNG Tzwei, YAMAMOTO Umi
tel: +81 3 5689 1014
fax: +81 3 5689 1044
E-mail: international@nikkatsu.co.jp
https://intl.nikkatsu.com
