Pigs and Battleships

"Pigs and Battleships" (1961) is available to watch online on iFILM — a Japanese crime drama by Shohei Imamura, 108 minutes. Yokosuka, the years of the US occupation: young Kinta is tangled up with the yakuza, while his girlfriend Haruko tries to keep enough distance from that world to survive.

Imamura frames the American military presence and Japanese organized crime as two sides of the same transaction — the port, the brothels, the base all feeding on the same people. Haruko is the one figure who pushes back with any conviction. A sharp, angry early film from the director who later made "Vengeance Is Mine" and "The Ballad of Narayama." Stream "Pigs and Battleships" online on iFILM.