“While a grudge exists, there will always be a bond between us.” Toshio Masuda’s Akai hankachi (US: Red Handkerchief) blends mystery, muted colors, and musical diversion into a moody Japanese noir about the divergence of fates of a detective and his partner. Starring Japanese superstar Yûjirô Ishihara, who had earlier starred in I Am Waiting (1957) and Rusty Knife (1958), the film tells the story of Yokohama police detective and trained sharpshooter Jirō Mikami (Ishihara), who quits the force and moves north to Hokkado after killing a detained suspect who was about to assault his partner Takeshi Ishizuka (Hideaki Nitani). After four years drifting, strumming his guitar, and working construction (“All Japan is a construction site”), Mikami receives a visit from police investigator Tsuchiya (Nobuo Kaneko) who suspects his former partner has been up to no good, having married Reiko Hiraoka (Ruriko Asaoka), the daughter of Mikami’s victim, and built tremendous wealth through a supermarket chain with questionable funding sources. Mikami is ultimately persuaded to return to Yokohama and ends up investigating his former partner and falling in love with his wife. It’s a stylish film with brilliant cinematography from Mamiya that emphasizes close-ups, slow zooms, asymmetric compositions, and high angles: note, for example, the camera’s cut from directly underneath to directly overhead the witness as he’s interrogated, his body inspected from both extremes. Note also the final walkaway shot which most certainly was inspired by Carol Reed’s final shot in The Third Man (1949).