SHOHEI IMAMURA: RIP

Ryuganji puts it succinctly and simply:

"Director Imamura Shohei (79) died today at 3:49pm of a metastatic liver tumor."　

There are no details at this point. Shohei Imamura was one of Japan's most acclaimed directors in the second half of the 20th Century and some of his classics include DR. AKAGI, VENGEANCE IS MINE, A HISTORY OF POSTWAR JAPAN AS TOLD BY A BAR HOSTESS, and PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS.

I've seen several of his films and while I admire all of them they can be awfully hard to like. However, two of his early movies, STOLEN DESIRE and ENDLESS DESIRE are two of my favorite Japanese movies of all time. Made in the first year he started directing, before he became an extreme experimentalist, both movies hail from 1958. ENDLESS DESIRE is a sprawling, pre-Robert Altman movie about a theater troupe descending on a small town, kicking up complications, and then packing up and taking off. It's funny, sad and really something special.

STOLEN DESIRE is a pitch-perfect film noir about a gang of thieves who return to a formerly bombed out neighborhood to retrieve their buried stash of illegal morphine. But a pharmacy has been built on the burial site and they wind up renting the house across the street and tunneling into the pharmacy basement to steal back their money. Very, very dark but very funny.

I may have the two titles reveresed (which is STOLEN? which is ENDLESS?) but if you ever have a chance to see either movie, please check them out. You won't be sorry. And if you are, you know where to find me.