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Shohei Imamura (1926-2006) died last week at 79. Two time Palme d'Or winner, Imamura is probably best known in the west for Black Rain, his 1989 study of the social and psychological trauma of Hiroshima's survivors, and the Eel, a redemption story about an ex-convict who killed his adulterous wife. If you've just seen these films, however, you're missing out on this directors strongest work, if you haven't seen any you're missing out on some of the finest cinema Japan (or any country, city, or region) has produced in the last five decades.
Imamura's started his film career working under Yasujiro Ozu on films like Early Summer and Tokyo Story (1952), but he quickly differentiated himself from what he saw as the cliche reserved, stoic Japanese mystique envisioned by Ozu, as well as from the sentimental tragedies and epics of Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. Imamura's film world was a harsh, unsentimental one of black-market pornographers, prostitutes and serial killers. Through the sixties and seventies in films like The Insect Woman, the Pornographers, Pigs and Battleships, Vengeance is Mine Imamura plumbed the depths of modern Japan with a singular level of detail and a discerning, unselfconscious eye unprecidented in the work of his contemporaries, either the masterpieces of old greats like Kurosawa and Ozu or the nihilistic new-wave and arthouse sensibilities of Suzuki and Teshigahara (respectively). In particular, Imamura avoided the lurid sensationalism of Suzuki; creating a plausible, chaotic, living world came before tweaking a genre or style. When stylistic concerns do come in, they seem effortless and cogent, not merely for their own sake but as important structural elements in the world he constructed, serving to remind us of our distance if events become to natural or emotionally involving (which they often do). For both these reasons, I think film-makers as diverse as Mitsuo Yanagimachi and Emir Kusturica owe much to Shohei Imamura.
In any event, a message board post certanly can't begin to do justice to Imamura's films, so go see some of these (favorites are in bold):
Pigs and Battleships (1961)
The Insect Woman (1963)
The Pornographers (1966)
A Man Vanishes (1967)
The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968)
History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970)
Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Eijanaika (1981)
Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Black Rain (1989)
The Eel (1997)
Dr. Akagi (1998)
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)
Imamura's started his film career working under Yasujiro Ozu on films like Early Summer and Tokyo Story (1952), but he quickly differentiated himself from what he saw as the cliche reserved, stoic Japanese mystique envisioned by Ozu, as well as from the sentimental tragedies and epics of Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. Imamura's film world was a harsh, unsentimental one of black-market pornographers, prostitutes and serial killers. Through the sixties and seventies in films like The Insect Woman, the Pornographers, Pigs and Battleships, Vengeance is Mine Imamura plumbed the depths of modern Japan with a singular level of detail and a discerning, unselfconscious eye unprecidented in the work of his contemporaries, either the masterpieces of old greats like Kurosawa and Ozu or the nihilistic new-wave and arthouse sensibilities of Suzuki and Teshigahara (respectively). In particular, Imamura avoided the lurid sensationalism of Suzuki; creating a plausible, chaotic, living world came before tweaking a genre or style. When stylistic concerns do come in, they seem effortless and cogent, not merely for their own sake but as important structural elements in the world he constructed, serving to remind us of our distance if events become to natural or emotionally involving (which they often do). For both these reasons, I think film-makers as diverse as Mitsuo Yanagimachi and Emir Kusturica owe much to Shohei Imamura.
In any event, a message board post certanly can't begin to do justice to Imamura's films, so go see some of these (favorites are in bold):
Pigs and Battleships (1961)
The Insect Woman (1963)
The Pornographers (1966)
A Man Vanishes (1967)
The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968)
History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970)
Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Eijanaika (1981)
Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Black Rain (1989)
The Eel (1997)
Dr. Akagi (1998)
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)
