Peeping Toms
The Pornographers
Unrated
1966, Criterion
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge
Unrated
2001, Home Vision Entertainment
Veteran Japanese director Shohei Imamura once referred to his films as "messy," but that's not the word I would use to describe his masterful movies. The camera is frequently in constant motion in his 1966 film, The Pornographers, which is not the same as being messy. To my eye, everything looks perfectly in place in The Pornographers. The action comes alive through ordered chaos, and this sense of order connects Imamura with his early mentor, master director Yasujiro Ozu.
The Pornographers, adapted from Akiyuki Nozaka's best-selling novel, is about "Subu" Ogata (Shoichi Ozawa), a man who makes 8mm porn movies. His makeshift family is Haru (Sumiko Sakamoto) a widow who keeps a carp she believes is her reincarnated husband, a stepson who is a blackmailer and a seductive stepdaughter. The man is obsessed with the stepdaughter until, after listening to his assistant, he builds a mechanical sex doll. What happens to Ogata is both comical and strangely heartfelt.
Incest, voyeurism and superstition all play a role in The Pornographers, and the result is a comic affair that's credibly audacious.
The film's Cinemascope imagery is beautiful, especially how Imamura splits the frame through his use of windows and doorways. Imamura frequently films the action from the carp's point of view.
Imamura made his 2001 fantasy Warm Water Under a Red Bridge at age 75, and clearly he's at the height of his filmmaking powers. While the film possesses little of Imamura's fast-moving camerawork and elaborate action set ups, it compensates with a series of erotic gags.
In the film, laid-off businessman Yosuke (Koji Yakusho) goes in search of a golden Buddhist statue, allegedly hidden in a house by a red bridge in a town on the Noto Peninsula near the Sea of Japan. Upon arriving, Yosuke quickly meets Saeko (Misa Shimizu), a woman who secretes magical waters during sex. It's not long before Yosuke is obsessed with Saeko.
Imamura shows Japan's underbelly, its lowlifes and perverts. Yet, Imamura portrays them respectfully.
Imamura is one of only three directors to have won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or prize twice (1997 for The Eel and 1983 for The Ballad of Narayama). So the following phrase is completely accurate: Postwar Japanese cinema is as much about Imamura and his sensuous stories as any Akira Kurosawa Samurai epic. As more audiences discover his films, I suspect they'll agree.
The Pornographers grade: A.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge grade: A.
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