Stolen Desire

Whilst still serving his apprenticeship as an assistant director at the re-emergent Nikkatsu studio, Shōhei Imamura was tasked (thanks to the story's parallels with his own life) with adapting the story of a student drop-out who joins a kabuki-cum-burlesque troop into a rambunctious ‘B’ movie comedy befitting the studio's populist reputation.

Whilst Imamura undoubtedly delivers on the more brazenly sensational elements Nikkatsu had in mind, the anthropological tendency that runs through the entirety of Imamura’s vast body of work, is also apparent from the first few seconds of his debut feature.

Beginning with a brief narrated history of the city of Osaka, Imamura eventually narrows in on a theatre troupe and more specifically the theatre-aholics as the film's omnipotent narrator dubs them - small time actors who are so addicted to being on stage that no amount of heckling or under-attended curtain calls can dissuade them from walking the boards.

It is from this particularly rich (and suitably bawdy) milieu that Imamura’s debut feature springs forth - a tale of a down-and-out kabuki troupe and their overly educated and idealistic young director who finds himself not only caught between the affections of two of his actresses (who just so happen to be sisters) but also between these more carnal desires and his lofty artistic ambitions.

Stolen Desire (盗まれた欲情), dir. Shōhei Imamura, Japan 1958, Japanese with English subtitles, 92 min.