In the Realm of the Senses

by Joan Mellen

Overview

Declared obscene in Japan, where it has never been shown in its entirety, Oshima Nagisa's In the Realm of the Senses, was shown uncut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976: thirteen screenings were required to satisfy audience demand. The unprecedented explicitness with which the film presented sexual acts inevitably caused widespread controversy. But this is not a film which sets out simply to shock. Oshima's account of a couple whose sexual obsession finds its ultimate expression in murder (based on a notorious true-life incident in 1936 Tokyo) was animated by deep political convictions. As Joan Mellen explains, Oshima wished to break with social conventions as well as the film-making culture of the past. He took a revolutionary position. Refusing to follow the lead of the masters who had gone before him (Mizoguchi, Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa), disdaining costume drama and poignant family portraits, Oshima attacked the sense of victimhood he saw everywhere in his country's psychic make-up. In the Realm of the Senses is the fullest expression of this political intent. Oshima's lovers seek to combat social repression through sexual transgression—but they fail.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844570348
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/28/2004
Series:	BFI Film Classics
Edition description:	2004
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	4.72(w) x 7.28(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Joan Mellen is Professor of Creative Writing at Temple University, USA. She is the author of the BFI Film Classics on Seven Samurai and In the Realm of the Senses, as well as several works of biography, fiction, and literary criticism. Her latest book is A Farewell To Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination and the Case That Should Have Changed History (2005).

Table of Contents

	Oshima Nagisa, Auteur	8
	Reverse Utopias	21
	Mise en Scene	37
	Crime, Morality and 'In the Realm of the Senses'	70
	Codas	78
	Credits	85
	Bibliography	87