There’s a small class of excellent late Japanese noirs that emphasize psychological tension and mental unraveling over non-stop action and suspense (A Wife Confesses, 1961; The Inheritance, 1962; etc.), and, for some noir fans, the subtler pacing and interiority can be all the more gripping. In Hiromichi Horikawa’s Kuroi gashû: Aru sarariman no shôgen (US: The Lost Alibi), an average Japanese husband, father, and company man, with the drab title of procurement manager, commences a downward spiral to total ruination by telling a single lie to the local police. Delivering an extraordinary performance that intensifies over time, Keiji Kobayashi plays Teiichiro Ishinu, the comfortably situated man whose fated lie is aimed at hiding his extramarital affair with a pretty young co-worker named Chieko Umetani (Chisako Hara). It seems his next-door neighbor, insurance salesman Kozo Sugiyama (Masao Oda), is the primary suspect in a home invasion and murder case; Sugiyama’s only alibi is his having bumped into Ishinu on the street one night as Ishinu was leaving Chieko’s apartment in her neighborhood on the other side of town. Since Ishinu had told his wife Kuniko (the excellent Chieko Nakakita) that he’d gone to the movies alone that night, he’s compelled to tell the police that he was nowhere near that location and never saw Sugiyama, who now faces the death penalty. Thus begins Ishinu’s descent into guilt and shame, and just when he thinks it’s all over, new complications lead to blackmail and murder. While the film is beautifully crafted, it’s not visually dazzling; instead, we’re led, one scene after another, to the limits of poetic justice. “What did I do to deserve this?” Ishinu asks at one point. He entered the noir universe, that’s what.