At least among English-speaking audiences, A Colt Is My Passport is easily the most widely seen directorial effort from Takashi Nomura, a prolific actor and filmmaker who started appearing in front of the camera in the mid-1950s under the name Takashi Sudô, with roles in such films as Imamura's Pigs and Battleships (1961). Often appearing in bit parts, he frequently acted in films opposite leading man Jô Shishido, the puffy-faced superstar whose distinctive look was achieved through surgical cheek augmentation. The two men had already acted together in a slew of Seijun Suzuki films like Branded to Kill, Gate of Flesh (1964), Youth of the Beast (1963), The Boy Who Came Back (1958) and Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (1963) when Nomura enlisted Shishido to star in this particular film. It was clearly the right choice given the star's proficiency with playing dangerous but utterly cool criminals, in this case the beleaguered hit man Shûji Kamimura who ends up running from the gang and its rivals after being hired to take out a powerful mob boss.
Like most great Japanese noirs, especially those from Nikkatsu, this one was shot in striking monochrome as well as the studio's Nikkatsuscope process. The country's use of widescreen black-and-white imagery is comparable to no other, with a reliance on dynamic compositions, unusual angles and peculiar elements fluttering into frame, expertly handled in this case by cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine. A maestro at using light and shadow for psychological effect, he burst to prominence with Kô Nakahira's Crazed Fruit (1956) and excelled in numerous Suzuki projects including Take Aim at the Police Van (1960). In fact, he had proven his skill at adapting to the use of extreme, saturated color with Tokyo Drifter just before this, but he snapped back to the shadowy world of black-and-white ne'er do wells without missing a beat here.
Adding greatly to the film's unusual texture is its swaggering, sometimes jazz-inflected music score by Harumi Ibe, another Suzuki veteran since the early days of Teenage Yakuza (1962). Openly aping the recent innovations of Ennio Morricone (including unmistakable harmonica accents), the film is yet another reflection of Japan's infatuation with music from Italian cinema; in fact, the country has long been a source for elaborate deluxe treatments of soundtracks by Morricone and his peers, with spaghetti westerns held in particularly high esteem. As heard here, that impact managed to seep into the artistic bones of Japanese cinema, producing something distinctive on its own rather than functioning as a simple imitation.
By Nathaniel Thompson
