Watch at Home 01.31.2025

By A Man's Face Shall You Know Him

Directed by Tai Kato
Film Movement Classics
1966
89 Minutes
Japan
Japanese
Action, Crime, Asian, Classics
Not Rated

Korean gangsters try to take over from their Japanese counterparts in post war Japan.

Director & Cast

  • Director: Tai Kato
  • Starring: Noboru Ando
  • Starring: Ichiro Nakatani
  • Starring: Sanae Nakahara
  • Starring: Ryôhei Uchida

Where to Watch

Photos

Reviews

  • "Watching a Kato picture is a pure pleasure. He is so much a master of genre that he can play with the conventions with great ease and create films of superb craftsmanship and personal style. "
    Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
  • "Kato raised even routine stories of gangster revenge to dramatic heights using Ozu-esque low angles to give his characters grandeur and filming action scenes with a Kurosawa-like combination of realism and panache. But his style was ultimately his own, as were his strong, passionate heroines…who coolly dispatches male opponents with a short sword."
    Mark Schilling, Japan Times
  • "Kato himself is both forward looking yet one of the most traditional of Japanese post-war film-makers, nowhere more evident than in this movie. "
    Japan on Film
  • "It is highly compelling, dramatic and wonderful looking...."
    Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye
  • "[O]ne of the finer revisionist gangster pictures of its period, and a film that successfully traces the break point separating national guilt from personal accountability."
    Blaise Radley, FilmHounds
  • "By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him is a sprawling, gutsy account of a Korean-Japanese gang’s ruthless rise to power in 1948 Osaka and a local doctor’s unexpected opposition to the hoodlums. Told through vibrant colour cinematography and a complex series of flashbacks, Kato traces the influences of sex, violence, and racism in post-war Japan."
    Make Mine Criterion