The insect woman

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Movie
German title The insect woman
Original title に っ ぽ ん 昆虫 記
(Nippon Konchūki)
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1963
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Shōhei Imamura
script Keiji Hasebe ,
Shōhei Imamura
production Jirō Tomoda ,
Kazu Ōtsuka
music Toshiro Mayuzumi
camera Shinsaku Himeda
cut Matsuo Tanji
occupation

The insect woman (original title: に っ ぽ ん 昆虫 記 , Nippon Konchūki , German "Japanese insect records ; Japanese souvenirs entomologiques ") is a Japanese film drama in black and white from 1963 by Shohei Imamura , who - together with Keiji Hasebe - wrote the screenplay. Sachiko Hidari , Emiko Aizawa and Masumi Harukawa can be seen in the leading roles . The work had its world premiere on November 16, 1963 in Japan. In the Federal Republic of Germany, it premiered on July 6, 1964 in Berlin as part of the International Film Festival .

action

The film begins in 1918 in a Japanese village with the birth of the "heroine" Tome Matsuki. Some aspects indicate that the girl is probably a so-called "soldier's child", because the mother is frivolous and the legal father a bit idiot. The following scenes show the girl as an adolescent sleeping only with the “father”, as a factory worker and lover of her boss and finally as the mother of a child out of wedlock who is only a burden for her.

Later, when it became a nuisance, her boss settled Tome with a few thousand yen and released him from work and concubine duties. She goes to Tokyo alone , leads a meager life there and is hired as a pleasure girl by a lady of her sect . Now she is taken care of and can send money to her family in the distant village, with whom her daughter is also staying. Over time, Tome serves herself up as the representative of her new superiors. When she goes to prison for illegal fornication , Tome goes "self-employed". Now even the boss of a call girl ring, she for her part exploits the girls as she was once exploited herself. A respectable businessman is her boyfriend, who in turn robs her of her money. When her career of exploitation is suddenly stopped by the police one day, the good years are over. Released from prison, she has to discover that she has been abandoned by her girls, that her lover is only able to provide her with a place to stay and a job as a cleaning woman with remnants of decency and that she ruthlessly seduces her now grown-up daughter who has come to town, to borrow money from his mother for an agricultural project.

Awards

  • Sachiko Hidari received the Silver Bear in the category "Best Actress" at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1964.
  • The state film evaluation agency Wiesbaden gave the work the rating "valuable".

Reviews

The Protestant film observer is full of praise: “Reportage of a Japanese woman's life in strict, self-contained sequences. What initially appears as a speculative 'moral film' turns out to be a piece of moral history that captivates with its unsentimental treatment of a difficult topic. Recommended to adults to friends of Japanese film art. ”The lexicon of international film judges less benevolently :“ A critically accentuated, with commenting interposed texts and documentary insertions, time and moral image; a mixture of glaring drama and educational ambitions that is not always credible. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Evangelischer Filmbeobachter , Evangelischer Presseverband Munich, Review No. 309/1967, pp. 394–395.
  2. https://www.berlinale.de/de/archiv/jahresarchive/1964/03_preistr_ger_1964/03_Preistraeger_1964.html
  3. The insect woman. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 8, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used