Imamura Shohei
Voyeurism and His Visual Style
Imamura’s Film Style
SHOT SIZE
• Imamura’s films mainly consist of long and
medium shots
Imamura’s Film Style
• Occasional close-ups – more impressive
• Lower part of the body – sexual desire
Imamura’s Film Style
• Natural light in both interior and exterior scenes
• Source light - not artificially lit
• Lighting in location shooting - shot in available
light
Imamura’s Film Style
LIGHTING
• Effective uses of high contrast of light and
shadow - low key lighting
Imamura’s Film Style
The Insect Woman (1963)
• Shot entirely on location with simultaneous
recording → sense of reality and spontaneity
Imamura’s Film Style
‘I decided to give up the convenience of studio
shooting and shot The Insect Woman entirely on
location. I also abandoned the convenience of
post-recording. Actually existing buildings and
places were used in this film and dialogue and
sound were recoded by wireless microphone. I
did not mind if the quality of sound is lousy. I
preferred the tension created by the use of
wireless microphone, which picked up even the
breathing of actors.’
Imamura’s Film Style
‘Location shooting and simultaneous
recording are a lot more painful. However,
I was sure that we would find a new filming
method different from the one we took for
granted.’
Imamura Shohei Kinema Junpo
Imamura’s Film Style
Physical limitations of location shooting
• INTERIOR SPACE (positioning of cameras
and their manoeuverbility; positioning of
lights)
• EXTERIOR SPACE (dictated by weather
conditions; reality that you cannot alter)
Imamura’s Film Style
Limitations of simultaneous recording
• Inclusion of unnecessary noises
• Higher chances of re-take (time-consuming)
• Inarticulate and inaudible dialogues
Limitations turned to advantages
• Reality effects / tension / spontaneity
• Greater realism
Imamura and
Voyeurism
• Film as a voyeurist or scopophiliac art
VOYEURISM
• A practice in which an individual gains sexual pleasure
from seeing other people who are engaging in sexual acts,
without clothes, or dressed in whatever other ways the
‘voyeur’ finds appealing; or from observing other people’s
private life.
• Films about
voyeurism or peeping
• Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rear Window (1954)
• A wheelchair-bound
photographer
discovers a woman
suddenly disappears
from an apartment
across from his, while
closely watching the
activities of the
apartment bloc
opposite.
Imamura and
Voyeurism
Imamura and Voyeurism
• Imamura’s films are not
directly about
voyeurism.
• They make the way in
which a voyeur acts
(peeping, recording)
into a film style.
• A hidden (half-hidden)
camera follows
characters.
Imamura and Voyeurism
• The camera placed outside a room or a house
records actions which take place inside.
• The camera imitates the way in which we spy or
peep - including limitations in sight.
Imamura and Voyeurism
• Pigs and Battleships (1961), Insect Woman
(1963), Intentions of Murders (1964),
Pornographer (1966), A Man Vanishes (1967)
Imamura and
Voyeurism
• Karayuki-san (1975), Vengeance Is Mine (1979),
The Eel (1997), Black Rain (1997) Warm Water
under the Bridge (2001)
• ‘Voyeuristic’ filming style is particularly clear in
these films.
Animal and Insect Images and Men
• Frequent insertions of an image of an animal or
insect
• Equation of animal instinct with human desire;
desire for food, survival and regeneration
Animal and Insect Images and Men
• Existence which lives to live, eat to live, and
copulate to live
• Pigs in Pigs and Battleships, insects in Insect
Woman, mouse in Intentions of Murder, dead
eel in Vengeance Is Mine, snake eating a
mouse, mantis eating another mantis in Ballad
of Narayama, fish and eel in The Eel
Imamura’s Film Style
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Opposition and indebtedness to Ozu
Orderliness against chaos in film styles
Obsession with camera position
‘Pillow shots’
Films after Black Rain - moving towards Ozu