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The Pornographers

The Pornographers

1966
Comedy, Drama
2h 0m
Mr. Ogata lives a complicated life: he's is a pornographer making two skin flicks per day and trying to stay beneath the radar screen of the local mob (imdb)
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The Pornographers

1966
Comedy, Drama
2h 0m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 63.34% from 177 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(177)
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Rated 12 Mar 2011
84
80th
A film about a pedophile pornographer battling a fish for the moral fate of a Japanese family - which is an automatic winner in my book. It's no surprise that Imamura's cinematography is fascinating. But what truly excels is the script, wonderfully detailed with layers of thematic repetition and contradiction, where characters find the correct balance between very real - and very perverse.
Rated 10 May 2018
78
75th
Imamura is like a rebellious pupil who rejects Ozu's idealism & Mizoguchi's moralism while building on their work. His aggressive experimentalism seems like an extension of this frustration & forms a fractured multilayered expression. A truly repugnant yet almost prophetically poignant examination of a family on the fringes of a rapidly changing society. Constantly offsets you with its pointed dynamic between realism & absurdity, institution & taboo. It's genius but perhaps a bit too much of it.
Rated 24 Oct 2011
5
56th
Visually and thematically I found this to be extremely interesting, to say the least, but the narrative was stale and had trouble holding my attention.
Rated 14 Feb 2012
0
0th
gross
Rated 09 Jan 2008
87
81st
Felt like a Japanese version of an Arthur Miller play. The fascinating (and at times, utterly despicable) characters really made the film. Great depiction of the philosophy and consequences of sexuality in Japan.
Rated 16 Jan 2007
72
41st
I had a hard time getting into it. It had a lot of clever and innovative stuff happening, but the story just wasn't that interesting. It didn't pull me in at all. I felt the same way about another Imamura film, The Eel, although I'd have to say this one was considerably better.
Rated 06 Dec 2011
4
74th
An oddball domestic comedy in which Imamura delights in the lowlifes and scumbags who defy traditional Japanese repression. We're able to sympathize with the pimping, loan-sharking, mob-affiliated pornographer because he genuinely believes his work is social charity. The cinematography makes great use of architecture, reflecting the film's voyeuristic elements.
Rated 17 Jul 2019
76
87th
This was a highly interesting character study that was filled with great acting, interesting editing and cinematography. It kind of fell apart at the end but everything that led up to it was amazing.

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