Shohei Imamura’s breakthrough film Pigs and Battleships (translated onscreen as Hogs and Warships) is a grimy tale of the underbelly of a Japanese port town under American occupation following World War II. Released in 1961 (though not until the 1980s in the U.S., following the director’s first Palme d’Or win at Cannes for The Ballad of Narayama), the film now appears to be a precursor of things to come from Imamura and his fascination with the criminal lower class of postwar Japan. The four previous efforts from Imamura had been studio assignments and were much less indicative of the style for which the director later became known. With its mixture of anarchic, frenetic plot and dizzying, technical bravado filmmaking, Pigs and Battleships fits perfectly in Imamura’s claim that he liked to make “messy films.”

The film’s characters are unspectacular and common, noteworthy only for the truthful way Imamura approaches them. Kinta, a young man involved with selling pigs on the black market, stupidly agrees to take the fall for the yakuza in exchange for a significant amount of money. He has also impregnated his girlfriend Haruko, whose family wants her to prostitute herself either literally or in the form of marriage to some American sailor who can provide for her. These are not noble people or even worthy of sympathy in the hands of most filmmakers. Yet, Imamura seems to find comfort in the working class, regardless of how low down the food chain they are, and nearly forces the audience to share his empathy.

By balancing out the careless and greedy villains among both Japanese and American characters, the film seems to be conceding that Kinta and Haruko may be far from perfect but at least they’re harmless by comparison. I see it as sort of a white-collar crime vs. blue-collar crime argument where there’s no real defense for the minor improprieties of the common criminals, but their actions ultimately pale in comparison to the evil doings of military, corporate and organized malfeasance. The bumbling yakuza that Kinta tries to impress and the obnoxious American soldiers who act like overgrown frat boys are the real source of the problems presented in the film. The lower class who’ve developed some ideas of ambition (even if they have to sacrifice an honest living) are merely trying to adapt to the changing climate of Westernization and take advantage of the opportunities given to them, whether it’s working with organized crime or servicing the sailors who are stationed nearby.

Kinta may appear to be a dimwitted kid more interested in the lures of money and promise of Western-type material riches, but is he really the one to blame? Certainly it would be inaccurate to attempt to victimize him or shift the responsibility for the personal choices he makes. Nevertheless, as in many of the director’s films, Imamura somehow paints a heavily flawed character as our protagonist, one who’s comparatively not so bad and whose heart is mostly in the right place. He seems committed to Haruko and supportive of her decision to defy her mother by rejecting a passive, secondary role as wife/whore to an American sailor. While their relationship does appear to be more out of circumstance than genuine love, Kinta and Haruko still share a common bond of experience and hope for a better, more independent future.

It’s with the character of Haruko that any hope to be found among the denizens of Pigs and Battleships must begin and end. The final shots of her literally meeting and passing by the hookers awaiting the incoming ship of sailors is both symbolic and affecting. Her rebellious encounter with a trio of Americans earlier in the film left her ashamed, but also more certain of what she wanted from life. When the opportunity presents itself to either stay where she is, doomed to a fate she doesn’t want, or set out on her own, Haruko displays an empowering self-reliance by choosing the latter. The character is like any number of young women from small towns all over the world - ordinary and average, but not content to spend forever stuck in an endless routine.

That all of this happens within a film usually referred to as a comedy or satire is all the more impressive, showing Imamura’s ability to blend absurdity with a bit of neorealistic poignancy. Though the climactic scene, where unleashed pigs (the animal variety, not the comparatively less innocent humans Imamura draws parallels with throughout the film) wreak havoc in the street, and the overall tone of the film are both laced with obvious elements of farce, Pigs and Battleships arguably defies being identified within any one genre. Just as there are moments of pure comedy, such as a well-placed insurance advertisement billboard, there are also heartbreaking scenes, drained of any humor, that allow the viewer to remember that Imamura wants you to laugh only after you’ve understood the seriousness of what’s at stake.

The film’s overall lively tone veers only a little from the irreverence you’d expect after repeatedly hearing John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” (part of a wonderfully playful score) in a film where everything American comes with negative connotations. Instead of seeming inconsistent, those forays between the harsh realities of postwar occupation and Kinta’s wild interactions with the yakuza and the hogs breathe life into the film that established Imamura’s unique place in the film world. Wacky adjectives like “madcap” often infect descriptions of Pigs and Battleships, but it’s the searing examination of truth, told with daft sprinkles of humor and the hovering feeling that an audience should laugh to avoid darker emotions like anger or sadness, that really makes the film stick out.

(Pigs and Battleships remains unavailable on DVD in the English speaking world, with an impending release from the Criterion Collection due at some point in the future.)

(UPDATE: the film is out as of May 2009 in Criterion’s Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura)