An astonishingly prolific Japanese director of the postwar period, the underappreciated Yasuzô Masumura ruled over a cinematic domain unlike any other. Outside of his home country, he was perhaps best known for the pinku masterpiece Blind Beast (1969), which brings the skin-crawling grotesqueness of Edogawa Rampo’s novel terrifyingly to life. In this tale of confinement and self-destructive eroticism, a model is trapped within an artist’s cavernous studio, where the walls are lined with humongous sculptures of women’s limbs and torsos. Heightening the tension between beautiful imagery and beastly perversions, the larger-than-life sets also exemplify Masumura’s mastery of the widescreen aspect ratio.
Such is the essence of the Masumura touch, which is steeped in an excess of style as well as emotion. Having won a scholarship to study film in Italy under the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini, Masumura brought a modernist edge to his portraits of a nation determined to regain its economic footing on the international stage. Satirical parables such as Giants and Toys (1958) and The Black Test Car (1962) see the corporate world as no different from the criminal underground, both are dog-eat-dog environments filled with ruthlessness and paranoia. Thanks to the success of the latter, Daiei Film studio kickstarted a cycle of “black” films about social malaise, one of which was Masumura’s The Black Report (1963), another Rampo adaptation that dials up the suspense of the whodunit genre to dizzying levels of baroqueness. Though set in the male-dominated worlds of the manufacturing industry or the yakuza, Masumura’s best works are also preoccupied with the autonomy of women in these stiflingly masculine environments. No one embodies the quintessential Masumura woman quite like the ferocious Ayako Wakao. From playing a fallen heroine cursed with a demonic back tattoo in Irezumi (1966) to a traumatized nurse in the unflinchingly anti-war Red Angel (1966), Wakao personifies the ferality of female sexuality, which leads to empowerment as well as ruination. Wondrously uncategorizable in their in-between place between arthouse and popular cinema, social critique and transgressive titillation, Masumura’s films search for the light and the darkness that exist in the lowest depths of human nature.

An astonishingly prolific Japanese director of the postwar period, the underappreciated Yasuzô Masumura ruled over a cinematic domain unlike any other. Outside of his home country, he was perhaps best known for the pinku masterpiece Blind Beast (1969), which brings the skin-crawling grotesqueness of Edogawa Rampo&#8217;s novel terrifyingly to life. In this tale of confinement and self-destructive eroticism, a model is trapped within an artist&#8217;s cavernous studio, where the walls are lined with humongous sculptures of women&#8217;s limbs and torsos. Heightening the tension between beautiful imagery and beastly perversions, the larger-than-life sets also exemplify Masumura&#8217;s mastery of the widescreen aspect ratio.
Such is the essence of the Masumura touch, which is steeped in an excess of style as well as emotion. Having won a scholarship to study film in Italy under the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini, Masumura brought a modernist edge to his portraits of a nation determined to regain its economic footing on the international stage. Satirical parables such as Giants and Toys (1958) and The Black Test Car (1962) see the corporate world as no different from the criminal underground, both are dog-eat-dog environments filled with ruthlessness and paranoia. Thanks to the success of the latter, Daiei Film studio kickstarted a cycle of &#8220;black&#8221; films about social malaise, one of which was Masumura&#8217;s The Black Report (1963), another Rampo adaptation that dials up the suspense of the whodunit genre to dizzying levels of baroqueness. Though set in the male-dominated worlds of the manufacturing industry or the yakuza, Masumura&#8217;s best works are also preoccupied with the autonomy of women in these stiflingly masculine environments. No one embodies the quintessential Masumura woman quite like the ferocious Ayako Wakao. From playing a fallen heroine cursed with a demonic back tattoo in Irezumi (1966) to a traumatized nurse in the unflinchingly anti-war Red Angel (1966), Wakao personifies the ferality of female sexuality, which leads to empowerment as well as ruination. Wondrously uncategorizable in their in-between place between arthouse and popular cinema, social critique and transgressive titillation, Masumura&#8217;s films search for the light and the darkness that exist in the lowest depths of human nature.

Beautiful Perversions: Films by Yasuzô Masumura

BEAUTIFUL PERVERSIONS: FILMS BY YASUZÔ MASUMURA

An underappreciated master of the postwar period, Japanese auteur Yasuzô Masumura ruled over a singular cinematic domain, where beautiful imagery and beastly desires coexist. Including the cult pinku classic Blind Beast, these recently-restored thrills journey to the lowest depths of human nature.

An underappreciated master of the postwar period, Japanese auteur Yasuzô Masumura ruled over a singular cinematic domain, where beautiful imagery and beastly desires coexist. Including the cult pinku classic Blind Beast, these recently-restored thrills journey to the lowest depths of human nature.