(Jinruigaku nyumon). The film’s full title, The Pornographers: An Introduction to Anthropology, only hints at Imamura’s incomparable wit and appreciation of the perverse. But, as Donald Richie noted, it does not indicate “the extent of his compassion” for his protagonist, Ogata, a small-time pornographic filmmaker who is shocked by the degenerate morality that surrounds him in his seedy Osaka neighborhood. Ogata is a do-gooder who feels it is his duty to restore to mankind some of the harmless pleasures that civilization denies it. Scenes of his making amateur 8mm films for the benefit of impotent men are some of the weirdest and funniest in Japanese cinema. Before long, however, our hero becomes saturated with lechery and forsakes his fellow man for a lonely retreat. The Pornographers is a technical tour-de-force: the camera constantly takes on the role of voyeur, peeking through windows, keyholes, fish tanks, and, most obviously, a movie lens.

• Written by Imamura, Koji Numata, from a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. Photographed by Shinsaku (Masahisa) Himeda. With Shoichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Keiko Sagawa, Masaomi Kondo. (123 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, ’Scope, 35mm, From The Japan Foundation, permission Janus/Criterion Collection)