(Buta to gunkan). Pigs and Battleships is set in the harbor town of Yokosuka, host to a U.S. naval base, along narrow streets with prostitutes, pimps, and assorted yakuza all lurking for the Yankee dollar. Kinta is a young street punk who joins the small-time Himori gang in their ambitious scheme to sell black-market hogs to the American fleet. In the gangland-style war that ensues, Kinta finds himself the fall guy for those he trusted. His girlfriend Haruko, meanwhile, does what she must to avoid the fate of the battleship babes. Allegory is too kind a word for Imamura’s brilliant protest against the American military presence in Japan. Lives human and porcine are equally expendable, and if the Americans behave like pigs to the Japanese, the local thugs follow their example. The shot of pigs thundering down the narrow streets has no equal for black humoresque.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Hisashi Yamauchi. Photographed by Shinsaku (Masahisa) Himeda. With Hiroyuki Nagato, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Yoko Minamida, Shiro Osaka. (104 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, ’Scope, 35mm, From The Japan Foundation, permission Janus/Criterion Collection)