CriterionCast

Scott Reviews The Shohei Imamura Masterpiece Collection [Masters of Cinema Blu-ray Review]

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Here are CriterionCast, we receive many, many discs for review consideration. We try to roll out full reviews when we can, offering analyses of the films in the context of their time as well as their relevance today. But sometimes you get a box set of eight films and just don’t have the time. But given that The Shohei Imamura Masterpiece Collection is a limited edition, meant to make these films available one last time before all of them go out of print from Masters of Cinema, we felt it important to write a bit about them, and let people know what a fantastic deal this is.

The set is currently being offered for £37.99 on Amazon.co.uk, and, having skimmed through the release (I’ve seen a couple of these before, but so long ago I hardly remember them), I can easily say this is one of the best values you’ll find on the home video market today, and absolutely a must-own.


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Pigs and Battleships

Given that it collects discs produced between 2010 and 2012, though, the video quality is not always up to 2015 standards. While this sort of handicap might give me pause in recommending a few of these as individual releases, buying them as part of a set at such a low price is a more than acceptable compromise. We will, however, start with those less impressive discs.

Imamura’s 1983 production of The Ballad of Narayama is about as far away from the 1958 film by Keisuke Kinoshita as you can get. Shot outdoors as opposed to on an elaborate set, it’s also much more explicit in terms of its violence and sexuality (though Kinoshita’s version is fairly shocking in its own way). It capitalizes on symbols in much the same way as Kinoshita’s (an early rabbit hunt is heavy stuff), and displays a similar capacity in exploring the possibilities within a single frame, often positioning two planes of action into one shot (even if it’s just to watch a woman pee in the background). The transfer is exhibits some compression issues – blacks are heavily crushed, and wide shots lack clarity and definition (look at the beginning of chapter six). Colors are a little heightened, especially the greens of the trees; this is one of those mid-period transfers that tried to correct the overly warm nature of early digitized films by over-emphasizing the cooler tones. Damage persists throughout (the beginning of chapter 5 shows all of it – scratch marks, white specks, slight fluttering).

Vengeance is Mine, now also available on a reportedly-better disc from Criterion, has many of the same issues as Narayama. A slight haze seems to cover the image, as though we are seeing the film through a very thin sheet, but colors are much better, more muted and natural. Despite the haze, clarity is mostly good, and it’s nice that the black levels are not pitch-black. The same damage and flutter is present here, which you can see at the beginnings of chapters six and eight – look at the leaves on the right hand side of the frame in chapter eight, how unnaturally they seem to blow in the wind. Damage seems to increase at certain sudden moments, perhaps the reel changes, but who’s to say. As with Narayama, wide shots suffer (see the very end of chapter five).

A Man Vanishes is the only DVD-only release in the package, and the transfer does not seem like it could be much-improved in higher definition. Contrast is very high, offering little detail in the white areas especially. Dust and specks are in every frame I revisited. Some of these issues may be inherent to the source and the you-are-there aesthetic, as these were not unnatural or even terribly bothersome issues. Clarity suffers somewhat, but on the whole, this feels in keeping with a lower-quality (but complete!) film print, which is fine by me.

Now things start to get really good.


The Insect Woman
The Insect Woman

Pigs and Battleships and The Insect Woman are absolutely stunning on Blu-ray. For Pigs, look no further (well, keep watching the film at some point) than the beginning of chapter 3. Vast variations in the gray balancing the intensity of the whites on the man’s shirt, which are quite eye-catching without quite getting to the level of being blown-out. Black levels are darker than the color features above without, mostly, sacrificing detail (there’s some compression crushing, but you really have to be looking for it). Depth and clarity are stunning – look at the beginning of chapter four, which has water, distant hills, an overcast sky, a boat in the deep background, and a man running from the midground to the foreground. Nothing gets sacrificed, everything is at a focus level reasonable for the capacity of film stock. There’s some damage (in that sequence and the next, you’ll see many vertical scratches that pop up throughout the film), and there’s a slight flicker, but these are the sort of things I adore. The image flutters a bit, more pronounced at the beginning of each new shot (likely a product of splice cutting, an issue that could be fixed but which requires a great deal of labor). These sort of things help the film retain a bit of its “underground” quality.

I noticed more compression issues with The Insect Woman – look at the 5:00 mark or later on the 32:50-33:15 range – but there are also very complicated shots (at the beginning of chapter five, for example, with dust in the air and machinery whirring away) that look spectacular. As with Pigs, damage, texture, and grain are well-managed and not overwhelming. As with Pigs, too, contrast, clarity, and depth are generally excellent. These black-and-white widescreen features are the absolute best. I could watch them unspool all day.

Both of these films come with with “bonus” films on the same discs – Stolen Desire with Pigs and Nishi-Ginza Station with Insect Woman. Both are considerably less impressive, with Nishi-Ginza coming out way ahead in depth, clarity, grain, and contrast, though its aspect ratio seemed off to me. In Stolen Desire, the reel change marks are still visible. Nevertheless, these are not overly compromised, offering much rarer films in more than acceptable transfers. If these came out in the DVD era, they’d be rightfully celebrated, but it’s interesting how quickly our standards change.


Profound Desires of the Gods
Profound Desires of the Gods

The real show stopper in the package is Profound Desires of the Gods, which MoC somewhat riskily put out, at least initially, only on Blu-ray disc. In 2010! It was later reissued in Dual Format, but for the first year or so of its life, the only way you could get it was to own a Blu-ray player, and for us Americans, a multi-region player at that. As Glenn Kenny wrote at the time, this decision “speaks to a certain unwillingness to compromise that really only makes sense when you actually see how beautiful this disc is.” I wish I’d taken him up on this challenge earlier, because, though this is the oldest disc of the bunch, it is absolutely stunning. The daytime outdoors scenes are enough to get you scrambling to visit its shooting locations, and while some nighttime scenes suffer somewhat (look at the beginning of chapter six; dozens of people wading through water in the dead of night are not ideal circumstances for video), I was frankly so knocked out by how good this looks the rest of the time to much care about that. Grain is extremely light, but very well-pitched. This alone is practically worth the entire cost of the set.

Supplements are fairly light. No physical book(let), but a PDF copy is included. Look for many contributions, written and filmed, from Tony Rayns (who also provides a commentary on Vengeance is Mine), interviews with Imamura across his career, and occasional remarks (written and filmed) from other critics and filmmakers (including Alex Cox).

This is absolutely a bargain version of buying each film individually – slimmer packaging (a bonus for some buyers, I’m sure), less physical value – but the trade off is that you get each at an incredibly steep discount (buying them all separately would run upwards of £70). Not all of the transfers hold up perfectly, but the ones that do are outstanding and the ones that don’t are far from ruinous. Imamura is such a fascinating, distinct voice, who produced some electric films over the twenty-five-year period this set covers. With these discs going out of print quite soon, this is your last chance to own them in such fine quality.


Scott Nye

Scott Nye loved movies so much, he spent four years at Emerson College earning a career-free degree in Media Studies. Now living in Los Angeles, he's trying to put that to some sort of use. OFCS member, film writer, day-tripper.