Yasuzo Masumura (1924 - 1986)
Related: Japanese cinema - director - Blind Beast (1969)
Biography
Yasuzo Masumura (August 25, 1924 - November 23, 1986) was a Japanese film director.
He was born in Kofu on Honshu. After dropping out of a law course at the University of Tokyo he worked as an assistant director at the Daiei studio, later returning to university to study philosophy; he graduated in 1949. He then won a scholarship allowing him to study film in Italy at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia under Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.
He returned to Japan in 1953 and from 1955 worked as as a second-unit director on films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, before directing his own first film, Kisses, in 1957. Over the next three decades he directed around 60 films in a variety of genres. His work is noted for his dark satire and fluid style. Notable films include Red Angel, Giants & Toys, Blind Beast and Hoodlum Soldier. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuzo_Masumura [Jan 2006]
Director of ultraviolent, psychosexual films. --http://www.nndb.com/people/007/000062818/ [Mar 2005]
More films
Manji (1964) - Yasuzo Masumura [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Lurid. Hysterical. Gaping improbabilities and plot holes. A must see, though, for one reason: Sonoko Kakiuchi, long-faced, thick-lipped, huge-eyed, the woman in "Sunna no onna" made the same year as "Manji" and the bizarre nurse in "Tanin no kao" made two years later. The other woman, despite a long, somewhat distinguished career, here looks and acts like an Elizabeth Taylor stand-in tumbled out of Tennessee Williams land. See it for Sonoko Kakiuchi, here the protagonist and in color. (This corrects my embarrassing typo below. Couldn't see any other way to do it. I can read both the simple titles, so no excuse. Manji, by the way, is the Buddhist cross on the dvd box.) --frankgaipa via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058326/ [Jan 2005]
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