Early Works Show the Film Mastery of Shohei Imamura

Four early films of the masterful Shohei Imamura will screen simultaneously Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Monica 4-Plex, starting this weekend.

Set in rowdy Yokosuka, Japan, site of a U.S. naval base, “Pigs and Battleships” (1961) is a lively entertainment that reveals the impact of a steady stream of U.S. military men, representing an insidious form of cultural imperialism upon this city and its people, particularly an appealing young couple.

In “The Insect Woman” (1963), Imamura equates humans and animals in their struggle for survival. Invoking a favorite Japanese theme of mother love and sacrifice, it stars Sachiko Hidari, remarkable in her portrayal of a simple country girl transformed into a ruthless whorehouse madam.

The somewhat misleadingly titled “The Pornographers” (1966) is a bravura work in which Imamura attained a crucial sense of wit and detachment. His hapless hero (Shoichi Ozawa) has turned to making pornography and pimping to hold his family together. Considerable social satire emerges as the pornographer’s life starts coming apart, blurring the line between the kinds of films he makes and the life he and his family live, culminating in a stunning finish.

“The Profound Desire of the Gods” (1968) is still arguably Imamura’s masterpiece. Arriving on a tiny island where the ruling family practices incest and primitive religious rites, an engineer maps out plans to develop its sugar-cane crops and to build a refinery. Effectively blurring fantasy and reality, Imamura takes us into an exotic world whose ways gradually come to seem no less barbaric than our own, while deploring the destruction of its unique culture by the onslaught of modern “civilization.”

Information: (310) 394-9741.