(Hateshi naki yokubo). Endless Desire is a black comedy on the spoils of war much extended and enhanced by the greed, treachery, laziness, and lust of the postwar decade. Five motley characters celebrate the tenth anniversary of Japan’s capitulation to the Allies by descending on a wartime air-raid shelter where they know a cache of morphine was buried. The conspirators consist of the widow of the man who buried it, the owner of a Chinese restaurant, a gangster, a pharmacist, and a teacher. As a butcher shop now sits on the site of the shelter, funds must be raised to begin the excavation. The ferocious widow, while not the youngest or prettiest of the women on hand, is the center of desire and deception, becoming the first of Imamura’s ruthlessly determined women protagonists. A rough, hilarious film about the colorful Osaka underbelly—and a country perhaps going (like the poisoned fish in the last scene) belly-up.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Toshiro Suzuki, Imamura, from a story by Shinji Fujiwara. Photographed by Shinsaku (Masahisa) Himeda. With Hiroyuki Nagato, Sanae Nakahara, Ko Nishimura, Taiji Tonoyama. (97 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, ’Scope, 35mm, From The Japan Foundation, permission Nikkatsu)