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This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor are joined by Aaron West to conclude their conversation about Eclipse Series 21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties. They discuss Sing a Song of Sex, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide and Three Resurrected Drunkards, the final three films in the set.

About the films:

Often called the Godard of the East, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima was one of the most provocative film artists of the twentieth century, and his works challenged and shocked the cinematic world for decades. Following his rise to prominence at Shochiku, Oshima struck out to form his own production company, Sozo-sha, in the early sixties. That move ushered in the prolific period of his career that gave birth to the five films collected here.

Before he would come to be known as one of cinema’s most controversial provocateurs with his most infamous title, 1976’s In the Realm of the Senses, Nagisa Oshima was heralded as one of the most influential voices in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. The decade prior showed the director contemplating urban youth issues, showcasing the moral quandaries of a new, disenchanted generation struggling to define notions of identity in Post WWII Japan. In the early 60s, Oshima spent most of his time working in television before returning to features predicated on lurid social issues usually involving a fascinating mixture of sexuality and crime. But 1968 saw the auteur tackling the treatment of Korean immigrants in Japan in two striking portraits, Three Resurrected Drunkards and the dark comedy Death by Hanging.

Based on an actual criminal case from a decade prior concerning a Korean immigrant who murdered two Japanese girls,...

With the exception of several crowd-pleasing samurai epics (like Zatoichi and Three Outlaw Samurai) and a few bargain-priced historical costume dramas (such as The Ballad of Narayama and Gate of Hell), the flow of newly released Japanese art films by the Criterion Collection has slowed to a trickle over the past five years or so. (And for the sake of politeness and avoiding pointless controversy, I won’t invoke Jellyfish Eyes in this argument either.) We’ve obviously enjoyed a steady stream of chanbara, Ozu and especially Kurosawa Blu-ray upgrades during this past half-decade, and there have been several outstanding Japanese sets recently issued as part of the Eclipse Series as well, but we really haven’t seen much else along these lines in the main lineup since Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko came out in the fall of 2011. That’s over 200 spine numbers ago! But I’m happy to report...