Very disappointed :(

Really Surprised!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

In The Pornographers, 1966, Shôhei Imamura manages to juggle intelligently with universal taboos (pornography, prostitution, incest, fetishism, orgies) challenging the viewer to think than just to consume the visual product by using minimum of nudity; the provocative situations are discretely suggested and not viscerally exposed, and it works because it is impossible to accuse of cheapness or exploitation such an interesting smart cinematographic approach on the subject of sex in a Japanese society full of contrasts, caught in-between the conservative ways of the past and the effervescence of the corrupt morals of the modern era; sex and money are the spinning wheels of the human convoy routing and sinking it into moral and physical decay; the film abounds in visual oddities, bizarre shooting angles providing its aesthetic a brisk geometry, intriguing spontaneous flashbacks, inspired touches of black comedy, and finds an equilibrate formula to wisely highlight subjects considered dirty and shameful in a very clean, frank, witty and somehow cheerful manner

Audiences in the States had to have been mystified when they went to see this film because of the title, expecting a sexploitation movie, and got a very well-made "theater of the absurd" art film with no skin and only a superficial exploration of the mechanics of porn film-making. Mr. Imamura and his associates succeeded in making a "pink" film without the pink and they've done a brilliant job. Still, it took me four nights to get through The Pornographers. The film is done in long shot in a highly theatrical composition for the most part with very few close-ups or camera movement. As other posters here have mentioned, windows and doorways are used as compositional framing devices. This technique gets to be boring for a film that runs almost two hours and defuses the emotional energy of the story. There are two amazing shots that break up the visual tedium. One is a surrealistic scene of the mother clinging to window bars at the hospital which cut to her clinging to bars in some flat terrain that looks like the landscape of an alien planet while the camera speeds back. The other shot, very Twilight Zone-like in style, is the son visiting his mother in the hospital while in the background, the son's new, gorgeous wife walks towards them from the other end of the corridor. Both brilliant pieces of film. Jasper Sharp's book about Japanese sex cinema, Behind The Pink Curtain, gives The Pornographers very little ink. That leads to me to wonder how much impact the film had in Japan and worldwide. The themes and events depicted implicitly (thankfully not explicitly) by Imamura are often disturbing and repulsive to watch. Ogata craves his promiscuous teen step-daughter and eventually possesses, then marries her. The son and the mentally ill mother are drawn to each other in perverse, quasi-sexual ways. The mother and daughter are sexual rivals for Ogata. Ogata makes a film with an older man and the man's severely mentally and physically retarded teen daughter in the movie's ultimate creepy moment. Ogata's associate, formerly not interested in women, describes his new "relationship" with his own sister. A film's success with me is whether I could sit and watch it again, and, with The Pornographers,the answer is no.

Imamura is younger, and less well known, than those Japanese directors who came to international attention in the 1950's. He was for a while a trainee of Ozu's, though there are few stylistic indicators of that in "The Pornographer". This is quite clearly a new-wave film with hints of Godard and Fellini. Freeze frames, fantasy and a habit of framing scenes through windows means that this looks unlike the earlier classic Japanese films. Subu the eponymous pornographer initially believes that he is a public servant, providing for the less salubrious needs of his customers - photos, films and potions. He has a bizarre home life with a widowed hairdresser and her two children. Both the making of pornography and his odd home life provide some moments of rich black comedy. Other elements, such as the interaction with local gangsters, appear less central to the film and don't always fit in easily. This is not the sort of film where acting is of great importance, here it varies from good to acceptable. The main fault of the film is the length. 127 minutes is not necessarily long, it's just that it feels too long here by about 30 minutes (around midway there are some tedious patches). To sum up an interesting film by a director still little known, if it does not reach the heights of Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi or Ichikawa at their peaks, the truth is that no post 1960's Japanese film has. It is certainly better than the three films by Oshima (the only other Japanese new-wave director with any international reputation - possibly more for the "pornograhic" nature of his films than any real quality) I have seen.

Here's a modern idea. The movie starts with someone sitting down to watch a porn film. Then those same folks end up in the film. The bridge between the two, the film and the film within, is the eye of a carp, what we would call a large goldfish.It is here, I think, that Kusturica got his observing goldfish that drives this film with Depp: "Arizona Dream."That film within is about a filmmaker and his various troubles, including with his adopted family. This inner film has yet another inner film, twinned, about a man having sex with his daughter.Then it ends with the film within ending and the watchers remarking on it.Its of interest because it is the earliest Japanese film I know that has this overtly folded construction. But I will recommend a far more engaging, slightly later film: "Hatsukoi: Jigoku- hen." It has a more subtle construction and far more engaging emotional content. It matters, this doesn't.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.