‘PORNOGRAPHERS’--SONG OF SURVIVAL

With Shohei Imamura’s “The Pornographers: An Introduction to Anthropology” (at the Nuart Sunday to Aug. 22), it’s the subtitle that counts.

Never mind that when Nikkatsu released it in Japan in 1966 it ran into censorship difficulties on account of its title, for it is hardly erotic. Rather, it’s a darkly dazzling, vauntingly ambitious work of both humor and pathos by a major film maker, an artist obsessed with the day-to-day struggle for survival of Japan’s earthy working class in a corrupt, oppressive society.

It’s true that Subu Ogata (Shoichi Ozawa) makes more money from porn and occasional pimping (which he regards as respectable, beneficial endeavors) than from selling medical instruments. However, Subu is trying to support a plump little widow, Haru (Sumiko Sakamoto), who’s running her late husband’s Osaka barbershop none too successfully and has two spoiled children, a sturdy, pouty 15-year-old daughter Keiko (Keiko Sakawa) and a son, Koichi (Masaomi Kondo), who wants Subu to send him to college.

Subu is one of Imamura’s characteristically driven, sexually tormented heroes, trying the best he can to cope with a hard life that is now beginning to crumble on all sides. He’s beset by gangsters, police, Haru’s guilt and superstition--and by his growing attraction to Keiko. “The Pornographers” becomes increasingly surreal, ending with a bizarre, stunning coda that despairs of the possibility of a man’s love for a woman.

Shot in a harsh, high-contrast black and white, “The Pornographers,” which Imamura and Koji Numata adapted from Akiyuki Nozaka’s novel, is one of the most claustrophobic films imaginable. (Even a highly symbolic carp, which Haru believes is the reincarnation of her husband, is trapped in a too-small aquarium.) There’s hardly a scene that isn’t set in close, crowded quarters, and Imamura’s gifted cinematographer Shinsaku Himeda uses the legal envelope shape of Nikkatsuscope to make us feel at times like voyeurs peeking through a mail slot, and at other times as though we’re looking down on people already trapped in their coffins. Imamura takes a far more deterministic view of humanity than Kurosawa, yet their films are similar in their dynamic visuals.

In “The Insect Woman” (1963) and “Unholy Desire” (1964), also known as “Intentions of Murder,” Imamura created indelible portraits of two very different women--one a poor country girl who even begins to look like an insect in her transformation into a hardened Tokyo madam, the other an overweight woman who falls in love with her rapist--but both films were highly uneven, with social comment giving way to sensationalism. “The Pornographers” marks Imamura’s coming of age, his beginning to bring his fierce vision under control.

Imamura has always had the ability to draw utterly selfless portrayals from his actors, and while the entire cast is flawless, Ozawa’s Subu is as thoroughly realized as Ken Ogata’s compulsive killer in “Vengeance Is Mine” (1979). Imamura may view humans as animals in their compulsive behavior, yet by the time “The Pornographers” is over there’s no denying Subu’s humanity.

‘THE PORNOGRAPHERS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY’ An East-West Classics release of a Nikkatsu production. Producers Shohei Imamura, Jiro Tomoda, Issei Yamamoto. Director Shohei Imamura. Screenplay Imamura, Koji Numata; based on the novel by Akiyuki Nozaka. Camera Shinsaku Himeda. Music Toshiro Mayuzumi. Art director Ichiro Takada. With Shoichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Ganjiro Nakamura, Haruo Tanaka, Keiko Sakawa, Masaomi Kondo, Shinichi Nakano. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.