Let's Meet Shôhei Imamura - Endless Desire (1958)

(video by AsianVirusNet)

Shôhei Imamura spent his youth in the middle of small-time hoodlums and prostitutes at a time when black market was rampant (Guy Bellinger). It was during the war. So he came in the movie world with a harsh school of life. Together with Oshima and Shinoda he belongs to the Japanese New Wave (hopefully I will be able to make it this Sunday at Silver Spring AFI Theatre, to see a move by Oshima).

What defines the style of Imamura? First of all, he's Anti-Ozu: he focuses on the lower classes, with characters who range from bovine housewives to shamans, and from producers of blue movies to troupes of third-rate traveling actors; he has proven himself unafraid to explore themes usually considered taboo, particularly those of incest and superstition (Daniel Yates).

Endless Desire (Hateshinaki Yokubo), made by Imamura in 1958: on the tenth anniversary of Japan's WWII surrender, a motley group of five gathers in the basement of a butcher shop to dig up a cache of morphine buried during the war (AsianVirusNet quoting maple2).

(Japanese New Wave)