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How sad is this?

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a black comedy about an underground pornographer who has to deal with government follies and yakuza extortionists; he's attracted to his step-daughter and lives with his wife, who's convinced that her ex- husband is reincarnated as a carp who watches her every move from the living room aquarium, and jumps out of the water when disapproving of her actions. There's also a sub-plot about an incestuous father trying to star in one of protagonist's films by having sex with his own retarded daughter. As if this onslaught of strange ideas isn't enough, the movie is directed by Shohei Imamura, whose films are usually excellent by default.So what went wrong? Well, first, off, the movie is very boring, despite all those strange ideas. It has a simple plot, but goes on for too long and a lot of situations get repetitive and boring quickly. The narrative is very disorienting; without any exposition whatsoever, broken into short, talky vignettes which are interrupted by spontaneous flashbacks and dream sequences which end on a still image. To top it off, the movie ends up being a movie within a movie, as indicated by the beginning and the end of it. It's an interesting way of leading the plot, but is overall annoying to follow and the story gets old fast.The Pornographers (original title actually translates to An Introduction to Anthropology Through the Pornographers) is based on Akiyuki Nosaka's novel, which is more in-depth because it apparently discusses tengu- dildos and the making of a fantasy film about the rape of Nanking. Imamura's movie is very harsh and satirical, poking fun at the aimless youth and the sleazy filmmakers who think their job is philanthropic. It has a couple of humorous scenes (and Buddhist references), but the majority of the movie isn't much engaging.The cinematography is pretty interesting; much like the works of some other New Wave Japanese directors (most notably Teshigahara and Yoshida), Imamura's movie has a voyeuristic tone to its visuals (which is pretty fitting considering the plot) - characters are seen through keyholes, greasy windows and glass doors. The mise-en-scene is always completely cluttered, with a lot of random household objects occupying the frame. Some shots are seen through the aquarium, which serves for a nice effect here and there. Also, there are many long takes. It's really an interesting visual approach, combined with Fellini-esque oniric sequences, which work in a strange way.

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

Audiences in the States had to have been mystified when they went to see this film because of the title, expecting a sexploitation movie, and got a very well-made "theater of the absurd" art film with no skin and only a superficial exploration of the mechanics of porn film-making. Mr. Imamura and his associates succeeded in making a "pink" film without the pink and they've done a brilliant job. Still, it took me four nights to get through The Pornographers. The film is done in long shot in a highly theatrical composition for the most part with very few close-ups or camera movement. As other posters here have mentioned, windows and doorways are used as compositional framing devices. This technique gets to be boring for a film that runs almost two hours and defuses the emotional energy of the story. There are two amazing shots that break up the visual tedium. One is a surrealistic scene of the mother clinging to window bars at the hospital which cut to her clinging to bars in some flat terrain that looks like the landscape of an alien planet while the camera speeds back. The other shot, very Twilight Zone-like in style, is the son visiting his mother in the hospital while in the background, the son's new, gorgeous wife walks towards them from the other end of the corridor. Both brilliant pieces of film. Jasper Sharp's book about Japanese sex cinema, Behind The Pink Curtain, gives The Pornographers very little ink. That leads to me to wonder how much impact the film had in Japan and worldwide. The themes and events depicted implicitly (thankfully not explicitly) by Imamura are often disturbing and repulsive to watch. Ogata craves his promiscuous teen step-daughter and eventually possesses, then marries her. The son and the mentally ill mother are drawn to each other in perverse, quasi-sexual ways. The mother and daughter are sexual rivals for Ogata. Ogata makes a film with an older man and the man's severely mentally and physically retarded teen daughter in the movie's ultimate creepy moment. Ogata's associate, formerly not interested in women, describes his new "relationship" with his own sister. A film's success with me is whether I could sit and watch it again, and, with The Pornographers,the answer is no.

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.