Sammy Davis Jr. in A Man Called Adam on DVD
Wim Wender's Paris, Texas on DVD
14th Annual Kansas Silent Film Festival - Feb. 26 & 27
Bad Girls of Film Noir, Vol. 2 on DVD
Bad Girls of Film Noir, Vol. 1 on DVD
Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy on DVD

Shohei Imamura (1926-2006)

Shohei Imamura, one of Japan's greatest and arguably most influential filmmakers, and whose mesmerizing, mordant stories of Japanese life and culture earned him two Palme d'Ors at the Cannes Film Festival, died in Tokyo on May 30 of liver cancer. He was 79.

The son of a physician, Imamura was born on September 15, 1926, in Tokyo and educated in private schools. In 1945, he enrolled in Waseda University in Tokyo where he studied Western history and literature before discovering a keen love of theater. During his run of studies, Imamura sold cigarettes and liquor in Tokyo's notorious postwar black market to earn some extra spending money. It was here that he became familiar with the minor hoods, small-time hustlers, addicts and prostitutes that would populate his films in later years. After he graduated in 1951, he found work in two of Japan's most respected studios, Shochiku and Nikkatsu. In time, he became an assistant director for Japan's first great post-war director, Yasujiro Ozu. With Ozu, Imamura cut his teeth working on some excellent films: Early Summer (1951), Tea Over Rice (1952), and the deeply moving Tokyo Story (1953).

Ambitious and talented, he soon moved on to write and direct his own material. His first film to be recognized outside of his native country was Nianchan (1959), a somber tale of an impoverished, struggling family in a mining town, earned a Golden Bear nomination at the Berlin Film Festival. His next film Pigs and Battleships (1961), regarding a young man who exploits his position of feeding pigs left by American soldiers in a port town to sell off the rations to the black market, was a savage satire of a modernized Japan struggling to find its cultural identity. It would set up the film that is widely considered his big commercial breakthrough - The Insect Woman (1963). This seductive study of the rise of a small-time prostitute to the rank of a madam (played with an amazing level of self-assurance by Sachiko Hidari) was a revelation in its blunt, provocative approach to the subject matter. Imamura continued to garner acclaim with his next film, The Pornographers (1966), a vicious black comedy of the trials and mores of a low-level filmmaker (Shoichi Ozawa), who works in the adult entertainment in a futile hope to gain some money and respect from the middle-class customers he admires.

In the next decade, Imamura would concentrate on documentaries, but he returned to brilliant storytelling with a fury in his extraordinary Vengeance is Mine (1979). Based on the true story of Iwao Enokizu (the superb Ken Ogata), who in 1964, went on a 78-day crime spree that included murder, Imamura went beyond any traditional pulp thriller, and created a fine character survey that was potent, funny, insightful and unapologetic; Imamura's gift for the narrative detail – such as Ogata wiping blood off his hands with his own urine, or him coolly pouring himself a drink in the apartment of one of his victims after savagely killing him, are too gripping in their irrationality to be forgotten.

Imamura earned his first Palme d'Or at Cannes for The Ballad of Narayama (1983), a poignant examination at a mythical village's tradition of abandoning their elderly to die on a sacred mountaintop. Stark, somber, and wonderfully measured, it resulted in international accolades for the director. His next international hit would be the achingly realistic Black Rain (1989), which portrayed the horrific aftermath of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and personalized it through the eyes of individuals who suffer from radiation poisoning. The most striking aspect of the film, apart from its beautiful black and white textures and thoughtful pacing, was Imamura's lack of sentiment and refusal to submit to moralistic hand ringing that only enhanced the story's power and resonance. It rightly brought him the Kinema Junpo Award, Japan's equivalent of the Oscar®.

He won his second Palme d'Or for the fascinating The Eel (1997), which viewed the life of a paroled convict whose closest friend and confidante is a fish! Strange though it sounded, it was slick, humorous and well acted, and it further strengthened Imamura's reputation of finding poetry in Japan's social outcasts. He made one of his most understated dramas with Dr. Akagi (1998), a look at an aging doctor (Akira Emoto) who searches for a cure for hepatitis at a prisoner-of-war camp; and he closed out his career with the unexpected Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001), a story of a woman who builds up body water that can only be released by sexual intercourse, leading to stunning results at the apex of her orgasm! True enough, it's a subject matter that only Imamura could pull off with aplomb.

Where Imamura ranks among other Japanese film directors will always be debated. But understand this, while Yasujiro Ozu beautifully handled traditional Japanese themes of loyalty and duty; and Akira Kurisawa's self-sacrificing, romanticized heroes were tailor-made perfect for Western audiences; Imamura stood alone when it came to giving a voice, sense of reason, and at times dignity to his country's marginalized members. He is survived by his wife, Akiko; a daughter; and two sons.

by Michael T. Toole