Pigs and Battleships (1961)

Pigs and Battleships
Directed by Shohei Imamura
Written by Hisashi Yamanouchi and Gisashi Yamouchi from a novel by Kazu Otsuka
1961/Japan
Nikkatsu
First viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] “Mac, Phase: everyone here is of the we-don’t-use-real-names-here mentality, so most of the time I feel like a really pilled up Snow White rolling around in the hood with seven drug-dealing dwarves—which, I don’t know… these things are never really as fun as they sound like they’d be.” ― Kris Kidd[/box]

In Imamura’s vision of Post-War Japan, the people are pigs feeding on the U.S. military.

Japanese low life living in the vicinity of a U.S. naval base have figured out a way to make it pay.  A Chinese entrepreneur has started a pig farm based on refuse from the base that he corruptly procures for a pittance.  Others live off a thriving prostitution racket.

Kinta is a young hoodlum who is working his way up from the bottom as a flunky on the pig farm.  He and girlfriend Haruko are expecting their first child.  She wants him to leave with her to get a factory job in another town.  He resists.

The movie basically depicts the depraved existence of the gangsters.  When Haruko can’t get Kinta to change his ways, she gets revenge by a tentative move into the prostitution racket.  This doesn’t work out so well.  Kinta eventually discovers that his number one use to the gang is as a fall guy.

This is a strikingly-shot, savage social commentary.  I can see the reasons why it is highly rated.  Imamura may not be for me.  I don’t have a lot of time for misanthropes.

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