Japanese film director Imamura Shohei belonged to a group of New Wave directors who broke through in the early sixties. He went on to become one of Japan’s major film makers.
Waseda educated, in 1951 Imamura began his film career working as an assistant to Ozu Yasujiro at Shochiku Studios. He was uncomfortable with Ozu's style and in 1954 left for Nikkatsu where he worked as an assistant director to Kawashima Yuzo. Imamura made his first film at Nikkatsu in 1958, but his first "personal statement" had to wait until 1961, with Pigs and Battleships.
In his 45 films, Imamura has tried to find the essence of Japanese culture, of the Japanese consciousness, and of what of means to be Japanese. He did this from what I would call a vibrant Shinto-mentality, from the boisterous spirit of the matsuri, the Shinto festivals.
At the same time, he probed the lower depths of Japanese society in connection with the lower part of the human body. His world is populated by prostitutes, thieves, serial killers, and when in his last film his hero is a "salaryman," it is someone who has lost his job and lives among the homeless.
Women are central to his films, always big women with a great zest for life, vulgar perhaps, but also with a sharp instinct for self-preservation. They are like Shinto goddesses, like Ame-no-Uzume dancing on the tub in front of the Cave of the Sun Goddess. Such women appear in his early masterworks Insect Woman and Intentions of Murder, and all the way to his last film, the mellow Warm Water under a Red Bridge. In Profound Desire of the Gods, a film situated on Okinawa and symbolizing the clash between nature and technology, the two main characters are female shamans.
Imamura twice won a Palme d'Or at Cannes, for The Eel and The Balled of Narayama.
Imamura Shohei made messy, human films. The man who looked for the essence of Japaneseness, was surprised by his enthusiastic reception in the West. How, he used to say, could people there understand what he as talking about?
Best films:
- Pigs and Battleships (Buta to Gunkan, 1961)
A wild story about the U.S. military base at Yokosuka and its relationship with lower elements of Japanese society, such as gangsters who are dealing in black market pigs and the prostitute Haruko. Ends with a bizarre pig stampede! - The Insect Woman (Nippon Konchuki, 1963)
A factory-worker-turned-prostitute (Hidari Sachiko), relentlessly pursues her dream of wealth and power, using sex and deceit without a qualm. Shot in a quasi-documentary style. - Intentions of Murder (Akai Satsui, 1964)
An obese, bored housewife (Takahashi Sadako) is raped by a thief, and tries to kill herself from shame, but ends up taking the thief as a lover. The thief finally dies, but the housewife survives, as voracious and determined as the mouse she keeps in a cage, ever spinning on its wheel. - The Pornographers (Erogotoshitachi yori Jinruigaku Nyumon, 1966)
The depraved hero makes a sex doll in the image of a former lover. - The Profound Desire of the Gods or Kuragejima - Legends from a Southern Island (1968)
About an engineer who finds a tropical paradise - and unleashes a primitive hell - on a remote southern island - Vengeance is Mine (Fukushu suru wa Ware ni ari, 1979)
A closeup examination of a ruthless serial killer. Plunges the audience into a howling moral void. Playing the killer, Ken Ogata is all grinning malice, cold lust and slick cunning - brush strokes in a masterful portrait of absolute evil. - Eijanaika (Ee ja nai ka) or Why Not? (1981)
First period drama. Set in the early days of Japan's opening to the West, the film is a riotous sprawl filled with movement and color. It culminates in a mass protest against the shogun's government in which hordes of protesters shout the title phrase (which translate loosely as "why not?") and a line of women turn their back to approaching soldiers, hike their kimono and take a memorable group piss. - The Ballad of Narayama (1983, Palme d'Or)
Drama based on a legend about poor rural villagers who abandon their elderly on a nearby mountain, so as to have fewer mouths to feed. Sakamoto Sumiko stars as a family matriarch who embraces this fate as part of the natural order, even bashing out her teeth to better fit the image of a useless crone. - Black Rain (1989)
Black-and-white film based on a novel by Ibuse Masuji about a middle-aged couple and their marriageable niece who survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, only to live in fear of radiation sickness. Imamura portrays the plight of the niece (Tanaka Yoshiko) - young, beautiful and shunned by potential suitors as "tainted" - with somberness and restraint. - The Eel (1997, Palme d'Or)
About an ex-con whose closest friend and confidant is a fish. He has killed his cheating wife and is trying to start anew with a woman who attempted suicide. Filmed with jolts of raw violence, dashes of low humor and interludes of romantic lyricism, - Dr. Akagi (1998)
Quirky nostalgia piece about an eccentric doctor who, as WWII draws to its disastrous conclusion, diagnoses all his patients with hepatitis and sees even the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima as a giant liver. - Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)
Features a female central character, Saeko (Shimizu Misa), who can only relieve the build-up of water inside her by making vigorous love. One man who can bring the fluid gushing out of her like no one else is an unemployed "salaryman" turned drifter (Yakusho Koji) who arrives on Saeko's doorstep in pursuit of a treasure trove whose whereabouts are revealed to him by a dying old tramp.