Masahiro Shinoda’s Namida o shishi no tategami ni (US: A Flame at the Pier) isn’t the only early 60’s Japanese film about a reckless young thug being paid by powerful men to commit crimes and alienating his girlfriend in the process (see Pigs and Battleships, 1961), but it’s unique in its milieu of organized labor. Sabu Minakami (Takashi Fijuki) is paid to bust up his co-workers’ unionization efforts by company president Tetsuro Kitani (Koji Nanbara), who saved Sabu’s life during an air raid when he was just a small boy; when his intimidation tactics escalate to manslaughter, however, Sabu learns just how fragile his most cherished relationships are. Mariko Kaga plays diner waitress Yuki, the pretty, young object of Sabu’s affections and perhaps the only source of light in a dark and gloomy film, both aesthetically and psychologically. Many of Shinoda’s scenes and compositions are visual marvels, such as during the nighttime attack and body disposal scene (“Don’t cry. You killed a man, so what?”) or the lovers’ conversation in front of the lion cage, whose shadowed bars might symbolize Yuki’s incarceration by her love for a very damaged kid. Composer Takemitsu’s deep, mournful strings add heavy drama when warranted, and the script often seems bathed in existential apathy (“What an empty world”), perhaps most shockingly when Sabu throws a stray dog against a fence for no apparent reason, this one act appearing to spark Yuki’s initial attraction to him. Shinoda’s primary message, however, is class conflict: after a prolonged protest in which laborers are fighting for improved working conditions, we jump to a cocktail party where beautifully dressed executives and their wives are cheerfully debating the nihilism of German composer Richard Wagner.