• The earliest Imamura film I could get my hands on for the study but already his fifth feature and it’s revelatory—a very strong film and cinematic voice
  • Starts with a bang- a great backwards tracking shot during the opening credits of sailors stumbling around a crowded and lit-up Vegas-like Yokosuka strip
  • Like all of Imamura’s work it’s about the seedy underbelly of society, lower class or outcasts—there’s swearing, hitting, spitting and prostitution in the first 5 minutes- haha
  • I couldn’t find anything official but Imamura worked under Ozu— and most cinephiles like to note how different they are in their content—and that’s true. However, Imamura clearly is heavily influenced by Ozu stylistically—very apparent—he’s a gifted stylist
  • Loaded mise-en-scenes… bottles like Ozu in the foreground. Later a fan
  • Drapes covering top 1/4 of a frame- inventive framing work
  • Uses the entire screen- he’s a depth of field master, von Sternberg
  • A film about the Yakuza
  • The protagonist throws father out of doorway and we have a great “The Searchers” doorway shot
  • 10+ individual wall-art shots like the saxophone player shot
  • Another one of a girl dancing in front of bottles
  • It’s political—there’s a child reading from a textbook about how great Japan is while there are adults fighting in his living room—anti-American sentiment for sure from WW2 fallout. Raw talk about pimping and whoring in 1961 opened my eyes a little
  • During the rape scene Imamura brilliantly cuts to an overhead angle of the room—then he spins the frame very rapidly 360 degrees as a transition to the aftermath
  • Stylistic ingenuity—great depth of field in a car chase- the entire end is awesome—it’s like Ozu directing action scenes with such care and attention given to the beauty of the individual shot and the framing—we have the glittery billboard in the backdrop— it’s chaos—it gets slapsticky—pigs taking over like cattle in Red River. Rows of trucks
  • The comedy does not always work
  • Dies in toilet at the end- tragic, funny, political
  • A Must-See film