The Crimson Kimono (1959)
Director: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Victoria Shaw, Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta
Synopsis:
Two detectives investigate the murder of a stripper near LA's Little Tokyo.
Impressions:
While the tagline is a little on the tasteless side ("YES, this is a beautiful American girl in the arms of a Japanese boy!"), this is actually one of the better treatments of Japanese-Americans in film that I've seen. There's no yellowface, no Chinese stand-ins. James Shigeta's Detective Kojaku is every bit the equal of his white counterpart. That's not to say the film glosses over racial and cultural tensions. In fact, the seemingly colorblind relationship between Bancroft and Kojaku bites them in the tail when tensions rise between them and the unresolved issues of their differences crops up. The murder case is practically a B plot, taking backseat to the love triangle that forms between our two leads and a woman involved in the case. This isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're invested in the characters and I was, so it was fine. You won't see too many movies like this from the time period and it's a solid film in its own right, so give it a watch.
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