Themes: Work Ethics, Nothing Goes Right, Filmmaking
Main Cast: Shoichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Masaomi Kondo, Keiko Sagowa
Release Year: 1966
Country: JP
Run Time: 128 minutes
Plot
A small-time purveyor of blue movies has to defend his livelihood against thieves, authorities, and his widowed girlfriend and her family in Shohei Imamura's dark satire. The Pornographers concerns the exploits of the hapless Subu (Shoichi Ozawa), an impotent (in every sense of the word) middle-aged entrepreneur employing a small crew in the back room of a barbershop. When not staging stag films in garages and secluded fields, Subu lives with the unhinged Haru (Sumiko Sakamoto), her Oedipal, high-minded son Koichi (Masaomi Kondo), and her impudent teenage daughter Keiko (Keiko Sagawa). Though he lusts after Keiko, the girl -- all too aware of her sexual power over men -- rebuffs his advances in an increasingly cruel manner, leaving Subu to channel his frustrations into the plots of his movies. As Subu's life grows even more lurid than his profession, local yakuza, the opportunistic Koichi, and the police all struggle to get in on the action. All the while, the family's machinations take place under the watchful eye of a giant carp, whom Haru believes to be the reincarnation of her late husband. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
Imagine Eyes Wide Shut as directed by a court jester and you'd come close to approximating the pleasures of The Pornographers, Shohei Imamura's impish, cynical treatise on the intersection between perversity and commerce. The film positively revels in its ability to treat taboo subjects -- the sex industry, incest, orgies -- with the same detached, laissez-faire attitude as its amoral protagonist Subu, played to oblivious perfection by Shoichi Ozawa. Imamura sets his anti-hero's comedy of errors against a lurid, workaday Osaka, portrayed in a series of meticulously framed, static wide shots in which everything and nothing seems to be happening at once. Although his characters pontificate on the nature of sex, attraction, and perversity throughout the film, Imamura doesn't telegraph his feelings, blessedly refraining from finger-pointing or easy moralization. Like Renoir before him, he's more content to sit back and let each member of his film's seedy extended family design their own unique end. As oblique and vivid as the giant carp that casts a blank eye on the proceedings, The Pornographers is a wry, acerbic, and -- in every sense of the word -- sensational allegory that only becomes more topical with each passing year. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
The Pornographers is a 1966Japanese film directed by Shohei Imamura and based on a novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka. Its original Japanese title is Erogotoshitachi yori Jinruigaku nyumon (エロ事師たちより 人類学入門), which means 'An Introduction to Anthropology through The Pornographers'. It tells the story of porn filmmaker Mr. Ogata, whose business is under threat by thieves, the government, and his own family.
The film is a dark comic satire, depicting the underbelly of the Japanese post-war economic miracle, in this case pornographers and small-time gangsters in Osaka. It has been called Imamura's best-known film outside of Japan.[1]
References
^ Sklar, Robert (2002). Film: An International History of the Medium, Second edition. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-13-034049-9., p.365.
