Taiyō no Hakaba (The Sun’s Burial). 1960. Japan. Directed by Nagisa Ōshima. Screenplay by Nagisa Ōshima and Ishido Toshiro. With Hono Kayoko, Isso Sasaki, Masahiko Tsugawa. 35mm print courtesy the Japan Foundation, with the permission of Janus Films. In Japanese with English subtitles. 87 min.
Cinema 16 opened their fall 1961 season with the New York premiere of Nagisa Ōshima’s third film, The Sun’s Burial. In his program description, Vogel declared, “This sensational film—a paroxysm of violence and eroticism—is the work of Japan’s foremost ‘New Wave’ director, Nagisa Ōshima. Signalling the emergence of a new generation in Japanese films, it explodes with the anger and fury of their rebellion, and reveals, beneath its squalor and brutality, a deep—and hopeless—humanism. [Luis] Buñuel himself seems challenged in this inexorable tale of terror, murder and depravity, enacted by racketeers, whores, robbers, agitators and thugs amidst the slums and industrial wastelands of Tokyo. Elliptical continuity, disjointed editing and haunting images both express and reinforce its basic themes: societal decline; corruption by money, power and poverty; perversion of the innocent; victimization of the guilty.”