Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Criterion Collection) (1964)

As one of a handful of young postwar Japanese filmmakers who brought a fresh viewpoint and more modern approaches to filmmaking with widescreen formats and grittier, hipper subject matter, director Shohei Imamura helmed three early 1960s films that form the basis of this Criterion box set. All three films deal with the sometimes sordid underbelly of society, and the seriocomic tone of these movies seems years ahead of similar films from America and England.


Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) is a young street punk enjoying membership as a yakuza in the naval base town of Yokosuka. His gang’s latest endeavor is in swine breeding, and in order to pay the exorbitant fees for feed and scraps for the pigs to fatten them up, the gang must double its efforts to extort money from local merchants and rob American seamen who’re keeping the local brothels prospering. His girl friend Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura) is being pressured by her mother and older sister to submit to being sold as a mistress to a wealthy American who’ll pay enough each year to keep the family in comfort. Haruko, however, has her own dream of leaving this dead end future of whoring for one man or in a brothel and heading to Kawasaki to get a factory job and live a normal life with Kinta. Kinta, though, just can't bring himself to leave the lure of money and prestige as he rises through the yakuza ranks, so he continually puts her off.

With Pigs and Battleships, Shohei Imamura makes a claim to be the 1960’s incarnation of Quentin Tarantino. The film is a heady compendium of farcical situations punctuated by violence, its cynical satire of both the gullible Japanese forgoing their cultural heritage and the boorish Americans who run roughshod over the traditions of a foreign land making biting, salient points continuously. The film has a surprising amount of humor (bodies of dead pigs carried to a waiting van on stretchers right alongside some innocent bystanders killed in the same hail of bullets; a mix up with the boss’s x-rays leading him to think he’s dying of stomach cancer when he only has an ulcer), but there’s nothing funny about the arduous journey the film’s heroine Haruko makes in the film, from an abortion in a rather seedy clinic to her battery and rape at the hands of three American sailors out to get their money’s worth. Imamura films this latter shocking sequence by pulling the camera up and over the heads of the participants in a breathtaking shot that leaves nothing to the imagination.



Tomé (Sachiko Hidari) perseveres through a life of hardship and exploitation experiencing both giddy highs and devastating lows during the four decades of her life that are highlighted in this film. From giving birth to an illegitimate daughter sired by her father through sojourns as a maid, a prostitute, a brothel madam, and a convict, Tomé soldiers on through the good times and bad. She even lives long enough to see the exact same spirit of indomitable will alive and well in her daughter (Jitsuko Yoshimura) who steals away her mother’s lover (Masakazu Kuwayama) and also his money in order to contribute to a commune she’s serious about making money with.

Imamura’s own version of “triumph of the will” centers on a not especially interesting peasant character. Though there certainly are sequences that are compelling as we watch Tomé rise and fall in the world of prostitution, there also seem to be much filler and many uninteresting detours in her story. The patchwork construction of the film is also somewhat off-putting with awkward freeze frames at random moments that jar the film’s flow and momentum. Sachiko Hidari ages convincingly over the course of her decades-long story (the film covers the years 1918-1959), but apart from her and Jitsuko Yoshimura much later in the story, no one else makes any kind of impression as characters glide in and out of the lives of this sincerely resolute woman.



Married to a university librarian Riichi (Ko Nishimura) who has no respect for her, Sadako (Masumi Harukawa) interrupts a robber (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi) one night while her husband is away, a robber who subsequently rapes her and then returns the money as he becomes fixated on the slow-witted young wife. Sadako’s husband begins to suspect something is amiss when his mistress Yoshiko (Yuko Kusonoki) begins spying on the wife and notices she’s being stalked by this handsome stranger. Only when he thinks his wife is interesting to another man does Riichi begin to become territorial about his wife’s friends and her every movement.

By far the best film in this collection, this lengthy character piece finds us with a female protagonist that, like Kurt Weill’s notorious Jenny, can’t make up her mind, Exactly how is she going to handle this stalker rapist who declares genuine love for her? How can she gain an ounce of respect from a husband who got her pregnant when she was his maid and felt compelled to marry her? How can she deal with a new pregnancy when the baby is undoubtedly the rapist’s and not her husband’s? Writer-director Imamura keeps the unexpected ebbs and flows of her life going for more than two and a half hours capturing her confusion and indecision as well as it’s ever been shown on the screen. Only a weak third act seems overly contrived and unearned by what has gone before, but Imamura never tires of unusual camera angles and interesting split-screen compositions to force home salient points about life, love, and fate’s hand in resolving problems and resetting circumstances for the innocent. Masumi Harukawa’s valiant performance as the indecisive Sadako makes the movie.





The film’s original theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio is retained for this DVD release and is anamorphically enhanced. Inconsistent contrast is the major problem with this transfer which usually features a sharp picture with an above average grayscale that generates good (but not great) blacks. Occasionally, however, whites get blown out and outdoor location shooting results in a milky look to the photography that doesn’t match well with other parts of the image. The white subtitles are easy to read. The film has been divided into 19 chapters.


The 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions. The image seems a bit darker than it needs to be with black levels very deep but often to the point of crushing image detail. Sharpness is generally good but occasionally comes and goes to distracting effect. The white subtitles are very easy to read. The film has been divided into 26 chapters.


The 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio is brought forth here with anamorphic enhancement. The grayscale is handsomely delivered in this transfer with excellent black levels and in the snowy climactic sequences, whites that are bright without blooming. A few shots seem very soft (possibly even archive footage that doesn’t match the rest of the photography), but most of the image is sharp and clear. White subtitles can be read easily, and the film has been divided into 24 chapters.



The Dolby Digital 1.0 sound is precisely what one would expect for films of this era though to its credit the recording is a solid effort that is not weighed down by hiss, pops, crackle, or flutter.


The Dolby Digital 3.5 audio track is clean but is otherwise undistinguished. Toshiro Mayuzumi’s discordant score often sounds a bit hollow but suits the film’s quirky construction and somewhat oddball characters.


The Dolby Digital 1.0 audio track is a solid encoding with dialogue, music, and effects all blending seamlessly together into the center channel. There are no noticeable artifacts to spoil the pure, rich mono soundtrack.



“Shohei Imamura: The Freethinker” is a 1995 documentary produced for French television. It portrays a typical day in the life of the filmmaker as he talks to friends about his movies, has his hair washed and styled, and visits a library with these mundane tasks being interrupted with clips from his movies. The clips aren’t identified, unfortunately, so one unfamiliar with his work would be hard pressed to learn which movie he needed to seek out. This feature lasts 60 ¼ minutes and is in 4:3.

Critic Tony Rayns talks for 15 ½ minutes in anamorphic widescreen about the merits of the film. A Criterion regular, Rayns’ comments are always interesting and informative.

An enclosed 14-page booklet features cast and crew lists, some evocative stills from the movie, and a wildly positive critique of the film by movie journalist Audie Bock.


Two interviews form the majority of the set’s bonus features. The director Shohei Imamura is interviewed for 21 minutes by Japanese film critic Tadao Sato about the making of the movie. Critic Tony Rayns critiques the movie in a 13 ¼-minute anamorphic widescreen featurette that features several film clips from the movie.

The enclosed 14-page booklet contains cast and crew lists, several black and white stills from the movie, and an ode to the film and the filmmaker by film museum curator Dennis Lim.


Two interviews form the majority of the set’s bonus features. The director Shohei Imamura is interviewed for 24 minutes by Japanese film critic Tadao Sato about the making of the movie. It’s in 4:3. Critic Tony Rayns critiques the movie in a 12 ½-minute anamorphic widescreen featurette that features several film clips from the movie.

The enclosed 14-page booklet contains cast and crew lists, several black and white stills from the movie, and a celebration of the film and its filmmaker by film essayist James Quandt.



The three films contained in Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes find master Japanese New Wave filmmaker Shohei Imamura celebrating the strength and resilience of the lower class Japanese woman who can truly take lemons and make lemonade. The three films have distinctly different tones, but they are all fine examples of a master craftsman at the top of his game.


Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC