For fans of Nagase Oshima, “Pleasures of the Flesh” receives its Criterion Collection release via the Eclipse Series. The best looking release of the film to date and a film that captures Oshima’s style of portraying a character’s self destruction and immorality. A fantastic inclusion for “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”.
Image courtesy of © 1965 Shochiku Co. © 2010 All Rights Reserved.
TITLE: Pleasures of the Flesh (as part of the Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties – Eclipse Series #21)
DURATION: 91 Minutes
DVD INFORMATION: Color, 2:35:1 Aspect Ratio, Monaural, Japanese with English subtitles
COMPANY: Janus Films/The Criterion Collection
RELEASED: May 18, 2010
Directed by Nagisa Oshima
Based on the novel “Kan no Naka no Etsuraku” by Futaro amada
Screenplay by Nagisa Oshima
Produced by Masayuki Nakajima
Music by Joji Yuasa
Cinematography by Akira Takada
Edited by Keiichi Uraoka
Art Direction by Yasutaro Kon
Starring:
Katsuo Nakamura as Atsushi Wakizaka
Mariko Kaga as Shoko
Yumiko Nogawa as Hitomi
Masako YAgi as Shizuko
Toshiko Higuchi as Mari
Hiroko Shimizu as Keiko
Shoichi Ozawa as Hayami
Often called the Godard of the East, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima was one of the most provocative film artists of the twentieth century, and his works challenged and shocked the cinematic world for decades. Following his rise to prominence at Shochiku, Oshima struck out to form his own production company, Sozo-sha, in the early sixties. That move ushered in the prolific period of his career that gave birth to the five films collected here. Unsurprisingly, this studio renegade was fascinated by stories of outsiders—serial killers, rabid hedonists, and stowaway misfits are just some of the social castoffs you’ll meet in these audacious, cerebral entries in the New Wave surge that made Japan a hub of truly daredevil moviemaking.
A corrupt businessman blackmails the lovelorn reprobate Atsushi into watching over his suitcase full of embezzled cash while he serves a jail sentence. Rather than wait for the man to retrieve his money, however, Atsushi decides to spend it all in one libidinous rush—fully expecting to be tracked down and killed. Oshima’s dip into the waters of the popular soft-core “pink film†genre is a compelling journey into excess.
Nagisa Oshima, one of Japan’s most controversial filmmakers. A filmmaker who shocked the world with his 1976 film “In the Realm of Senses” based on the true story of Sada Abe and a film that showcased unsimulated sex and faced major censorship. In fact, even with the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray and DVD release of “In the Realm of Senses”, viewers today still debate if the film was art or if the film was pornography. If anything, Oshima has caught the attention of many and many have wondered if his other films would ever reach US shores.
One of the founders of the Japanese New Wave, Oshima was known for taking on Japanese taboos and creating films against the status quo, the filmmaker has been doing his style of films since 1959 and working for the studio Shochiku in order to fulfill the studio’s desire of creating edgier material for the youth market. Â Oshima would go on to create three films which were known as “The Youth Trilogy” (“Cruel Story of Youth”, “The Sun’s Burial”, “Night and Fog in Japan”).
After politics played a part in Oshima leaving Shochiku, the filmmaker would go on to create his own company known as Sozo-sha (Creation Company) and in celebration of his work from his new studio and many fans bombarding Criterion for more Oshima, The Criterion Collection has chosen Nagisa Oshima’s mid-to-late ’60s films to be part of the latest Eclipse Series Collection known as “Eclipse Series 21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”. The DVD box set would include the following films: “Pleasures of the Flesh” (1965), “Violence at Noon” (1966), “Sing a Song of Sex” (1967), “Japanese Summer: Double Suicide” (1967) and “Three Resurrected Drunkards” (1968).
His first directorial film for his new studio would be “Pleasures of the Flesh” (Etsuraku) based on the novel by Futaro Yamada and featuring a screenplay by Oshima.
“Pleasures from the Flesh” revolves around a man named Atsushi Wakizaka (played by Katsuo Nakamura), a tutor for a teenage girl named Shoko (played by Mariko Kaga). Atsushi loves Shoko despite being a few years older than her and she enjoying her company with him, because of his poor status, is unable to have a relationship with her.
Despite Shoko’s happiness towards Atsushi, behind-the-scenes, things are not as happy as Shoko has been repeatedly molested by a man, and worst the man has blackmailed her family. Her wealthy family has had enough and with no one to turn to, they turn to Atsushi in hopes he can eliminate their problem.
Atsushi angered that a man would do such a heinous thing to Shoko, kills the man and when he returns, he is given money by the family but also promises secrecy to never reveal what he had done to Shoko.
It appears to be an easy crime and the murder would go undetected, until a man who works for the government has found where Atsushi lives. He tells him that he knows he murdered the man but he will not reveal the murder to anyone if he follows his rules.
The public official has embezzled 30 million yen and knows he will be caught. The man expects to serve about five years in prison but while he is in prison, he wants Atsushi to keep the money with him and to not spend it. He must stay and live at the same house and if everything goes as planned, he will be safe. Otherwise, if anything goes wrong, the public official will tell the authorities of what Atsushi did.
As the public official expected, he was given a five year prison sentence and within the next four years, Atsushi Wakizaka’s life has been turned upside down. He is living poor and Shoko, the woman he loved and murdered for has went off and married a wealthy man. Feeling humiliated, dejected and depressed, Atsushi feels that he has nothing to live for. In his mind, he sees Shoko looking at him and in many ways, we are seeing the self-destruction of Atsushi.
So, he figures instead of killing himself immediately, why not spend the 30 million yen that the public official had left with him and live the life that he wants to. And by the time the official gets out and the year is over, he can kill himself.
So, this begins the beginning of Atsushi’s self-destruction as he starts spending his money by selecting women (that remind him of Shoko) for sex and to be with him. He goes from spending his money on a yakuza boss’s girlfriend, to finding girls from a club esp. a married woman with a husband and child and uses money as a way to make her stay with him, to finding a doctor and a deaf prostitute.
Living life to its excess but as he gets closer to the end of the year of when the public official is to be released, something unexpected happens to Atsushi Wakizaka.
VIDEO:
“Pleasures of the Flesh” is presented in color (2:35:1). The film marks the first widescreen film on Criterion’s Eclipse Series and a film, despite being 45-years-old, looking great on DVD. I expected the film to looked aged, to have some defects, especially with the film not being part of the Criterion Collection series. But the film looks very good, the colors are very strong and you can tell that the original negative must have been taken care of or the Criterion Collection actually did some remastering work because the film looks very good. I didn’t see any significant digital compression artifacting or significant edge enhancement while watching the film. And this is important because there have been previous UK DVD release of “Pleasures of the Flesh” which have looked aged and muddy. So, as of right now, this is the definitive version PQ-wise of this film.
AUDIO & SUBTITLES:
“Pleasures of the Flesh” is presented in Japanese monaural with English subtitles. Dialogue is clear and I didn’t hear any clicks or pops during my viewing.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Eclipse Series releases do not come with special features but included in the insert is a background on Oshima and the film.
“Pleasures of the Flesh” is a film that demonstrates Nagisa Oshima’s strength in showcasing a character’s self-destruction and pushing the boundaries of moral turpitude. For those familiar with Japanese films during the ’60s, especially from Nikkatsu or from various filmmakers at the time, may it be pink films to yakuza gangster films, these films were quite popular for the youth market.
But one major difference when compared to these other filmmakers is that Oshima continually grabbed people’s attention due to his pushing of the boundaries. Through Oshima’s films, we can easily see him pushing the boundaries from one film to the other and then by the mid-70’s, going full force and challenging censorship like no other filmmaker has done before.
For those only familiar with Oshima’s “In the Realm of the Senses” (which is available now via The Criterion Collection), “Pleasures of the Flesh”, doesn’t show any nudity or sexual scenes but it does focus on one man’s obsession and overall, self-destruction. The characters that you see in this film, in many ways, each can be seen as immoral and unlikeable. This is where Oshima is good at challenging the viewer as you expect to see some ray of light within each character. And the final moment of the film is definitely his way of bashing the status quo.
Overall, “Pleasures of the Flesh” is a very good film and as mentioned in my DVD breakdown, this is the best version of “Pleasures of the Flesh” that has been released. So, if you know about the film and previously enjoyed it, this latest version on the Eclipse Series is the best looking version to date.
And as for the film, definitely fascinating in terms of how Oshima was able to portray these characters and creating the film’s overall pacing. Especially to see how one man is led to self-destruction, how he himself became corrupt and how he ended up corrupting others in the process.
A wonderful first film from the DVD box set “Eclipse Series #21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties”.