Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

MauveMouse 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

cwarne_uk 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.

MARIO GAUCI Similar to THE INSECT WOMAN in that, apart from its emphasis on sexual perversions (all too clear from the title itself), it features multiple characters whose story (even less clear, and more convoluted, this time around!) unfolds over a number of years - but it's also a more accomplished movie overall, showing Imamura's growth as a film-maker when compared to the generally rough quality of his earlier picture. Once again, the director here equates human beings with insects: in fact, this movie's full title is THE PORNOGRAPHERS: INTRODUCTION TO ANTROPOLOGY! The "film-within-a-film" motif (a couple of the main characters getting together from time to time to watch the amateurish skin-flicks they've shot themselves) accentuates the picture's essential theme of voyeurism, all the while making the audience a knowing accomplice in it; the very last shot, then, suggesting that the film we've just watched has itself been a mere "projection", recalls a unique subplot found in Hiroshi Teshigahara's contemporaneous THE FACE OF ANOTHER (1966; which I've just viewed for the first time myself). Also notable is a hilarious scene involving a retarded girl whose lecherous, incestuous father tries to pass off as a porno actress and an equally amusing subplot in which the main character's wife believes her late first husband to have been reincarnated in a fish, and Imamura occasionally indulges us by showing the unfolding drama from its blurred perspective inside an aquarium!

hedricj Saw this film in a wonderful class on Japanese new wave cinema (thanks, Jyotsna). Along with Imamura's "Ballad of Narayama," some of the finest Japanese work I've seen. This film is brilliant in its portrayal of modern voyeurism and its psychological implications. Beyond that though, it stands out as a film preparing us for things to come in the cinema of the 90's. It took pt Anderson's "magnolia" to finally bring full circle some of the innovative qualities of this truly amazing film. Note the merging of the wonderful score and the main character's consciousness at the end of the film. Shocking, sad, and beautiful.