And that's long and dull, only talk for over two hours, but the actors' game is very natural, you have the impression that everything is really happening in front of your eyes. It is also very original and very bold, even for the present time, all the more so for the year 1966. The whole film looks like some slices of life placed one after the other. It could have been much shorter, though.

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

THE PORNOGRAPHERS is a paradox unto itself. You try and take the plot in, something about a group of underground porn filmmakers trying to make a buck and support crazy family members, pay off yakuza extortionists, cater to the specific requirements of a kinky clientele, and you discover that it's not really getting anywhere. The same points are repeated again and again - men are sleazeballs, women are greedy, teenagers are selfish and unstable. A dysfunctional society in all its demented glory revelling in the most base human instincts. The story feels sprawling and disjointed, too many characters vie for attention each with his particular brand of peculiarities, the eliptical storytelling taking us from one place to the next in a syncopated manner that makes every scene a bit of a struggle for orientation.And then out of nowhere Imamura pulls an amazing shot, an unexpected moment of technical bravado, the movie suddenly becomes creepy and absurd and darkly hilarious, and you can feel sparks flying. Despite what the title might suggest, the focus here is not on the underground porn rings of the 60's. It certainly has nothing on BOOGIE NIGHTS in terms of sleaze or affinity for that kind of culture. Pornography here is used as just another facet of a recurring motif: voyeurism. Indeed, Imamura's camera peers at the characters through half-closed curtains, door openings, windows. Like the pornographers viewing the footage they shot on their 8mm Bolex camera, we're called to take an intimate look at the characters' lives through a keyhole.Not so much about actual pornography then, but the domestic trials and tribulations of Mr. Ogata, leader of this bunch of guerilla hedonists. The halfcrazy widowed mother he has an affair with tries to pimp her 15 year old daughter to him. The older son steals his money and runs off. He's in and out of prison. The widow goes completely crazy. Near the end he has an epiphany - to build a machine girl. No more worries, fast and cheap sex for everyone who wants it. And then we have the whole film within a film idea that makes for a great ending. The thing with the pornographers is that, no matter how confusing or meandering the story can be, it's so ahead of its time in almost every aspect (especially compared to American cinema of the time), not in the flamboyant manner of CITIZEN KANE in '42 but in a way that still feels fresh and modern 30 years later, that you simply can't ignore it. Bold and audacious, it commands attention simply because of the talent involved in the making of it. To go back to the pornography angle, if PT Anderson had to ape Robert Altman's style to make Boogie Nights, Imamura was an original voice.

Subu believes himself to be a philanthropist. Through his painstaking work, Subu, Pickled Pork, aides the suffering of middle-aged me who well in the urban sprawls of Japan by offering them things that soothe their weary minds and bodies. Subu is not a spiritual leader or a doctor but a creator of pornography. 8mm film, audio recordings of lovers having sex, cut and paste photos of young starlet having sex with sumo wrestlers, stimulants from Hong Kong, erotic literature, etc. Subu has a hand in all levels of pornography. As a filmmaker, he hires prostitutes and men who work in such locations as bathhouses to star in his films. He even custom makes films for his climates such as one depicting a doctor raping a schoolgirl. The film was requested by a man who was unable to perform the act himself. As a go-between, Subu helps older, respectable gentlemen to meet women such as when he aides an old businessman who wants to have sex with a virgin because he is bitter that he was not the first man to sleep with his wife. Subu aides this man by hiring a woman who plays a "professional virgin," but who in fact has just birthed a child. Besides a few encounters with the yakuza who want a cut of his profits, Subu seems to be on top of his profession, however, Subu faces a few problems as well.Living with his common-law wife, Haru, and her two children: Koichi and Keiko, Subu struggles to keep order within the household. Although she adores Subu, Haru believes that her dead husband's soul resides within a carp that she keeps within a tank inside the family home. Consumed with guilt that she lives with another man, she promised her husband that she would remain unmarried; Haru believes that when the carp jumps in its tank it is displaying her husband's discontentedness with her decisions. Koichi continuously demands money from his mother and Subu and rarely shows thankfulness when he does receive the money. However, the fifteen-year-old Keiko is Subu's biggest thorn in his side. Although Keiko continuously ditches school, drinks large quantities of alcohol, and sleeps with a number of men, these are not the reasons why Subu has issues with the girl. His problem stems from the fact that he has sexual desire for the girl which he displays by smelling the girl's soiled underwear and groping her when she is almost unconscious from drink. With Haru suffering from a heart ailment, what will happen to this family if something was to happen to her? Like in a number of his earlier films, such as Pigs and Battleships (1961) and My Second Brother (1959), Imamura in The Pornographers does a wonderful job of depicting the lives of Japan's subsistence level citizens. While quite toned down in comparison to its source material, Nozaka Akiyuki's novel which details the film-making process and its hazards, such as when a woman gets an infection from paint chips after using a tengu mask as a dildo and the making of a Rape of Nanking fantasy film, The Pornographers has a few eyebrow raising moments such as the father/retarded daughter porn duo and the three filmmakers discussing what is wrong with a father having sex with his own daughter. An interesting film to add to your Japanese film collection, hopefully we will see the release of more of Imamura's early films in the near future.