Rent I Am Waiting (1957)

Dockside Dead End - I Am Waiting review by griggs

There’s something oddly comforting about killing time in a dockside bar with washed-up boxers and failed singers, lit like a cigarette advert and soaked in gloomy jazz. This small Japanese noir sits in that in-between space: a film about people who think their lives are done, shuffling through the late-night hours, too tired to fall apart and too proud to admit they’re lonely.

Joji and Saeko aren’t quite Bogart and Bacall, but their bruised chemistry sneaks up on you. Yujiro Ishihara gives Joji a worn-out charm as a disgraced boxer clinging to a Brazil fantasy and a brother who probably isn’t coming back; Mie Kitahara plays Saeko as a nightclub singer with a broken voice, practically owned by the gangsters she works for. Together they make going nowhere feel almost romantic. The clothes, the camera angles, the trains roaring past the window – it all has early New Wave cool without making a fuss about it.

The final bar-room showdown tidies the story up a bit too cleanly, but as ’50s Japanese noir comfort food, this goes down nicely.