Japan
1978
105 minutes
Color
1.66:1
Japanese
467
With an arresting mix of eroticism and horror, Oshima plunges the viewer into a nightmarish tale of guilt and retribution in Empire of Passion (Ai no borei). Set in a Japanese village at the end of the nineteenth century, the film details the emotional and physical downfall of a married woman and her younger lover following their decision to murder her husband and dump his body in a well. Empire of Passion was Oshima’s only true kaidan (Japanese ghost story), and the film, a savage, unrelenting experience, earned him the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
| Toyoji | Tatsuya Fuji |
| Seki | Kazuko Yoshiyuki |
| Gisaburo | Takahiro Tamura |
| Officer Hotta | Takuzo Kawatani |
| Shin | Masami Hasegawa |
| Landowner’s mother | Akiko Koyama |
| Toichiro | Taiji Tonoyama |
| Director | Nagisa Oshima |
| Producer | Anatole Dauman |
| Screenplay | Nagisa Oshima |
| Based on a book by | Itoko Nakamura |
| Cinematography | Yoshio Miyajima |
| Lighting | Kenichi Okamoto |
| Editing | Keiichi Uraoka |
| Music | Toru Takemitsu |
| Production Design | Jusho Toda |
| Sound | Tetsuo Yasuda and Alex Pront |
| Production consultant | Koji Wakamatsu |
Close Criterion collaborator and friend James Quandt, longtime senior programmer at the Cinematheque Ontario and whose theatrical traveling retrospectives are always major events in the film world, is in the spotlight this week in a new, far-reaching conversation with http://theeveningclass . . .
Perhaps the most shocking thing about Nagisa Oshima’s infamous, hard-core In the Realm of the Senses and savage ghost story Empire of Passion is just how elegant they are, a couple of critics have noted in their reviews of our special edition DVDs. The former, writes Dennis Demody . . .
The following article, based on an interview with Nagisa Oshima conducted by Katsue Tomiyama in April 1983, first appeared, in slightly longer form, in the . . .
The concept of “obscenity” is tested when we dare to look at something that we desire to see but have forbidden ourselves to look at. When we feel that everything has been revealed, “obscenity” disappears and there is a certain liberation. When that which one had wanted to see isn’t sufficiently . . .
At the request of the author, Japanese names in this essay are given in their traditional form: surname first. When Oshima Nagisa began making films . . .
This interview, conducted by Michael Henry, first appeared in the May 1978 issue of Positif. What were the circumstances that . . .
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