Town of Love and Hope

NEW 35mm PRINT!  │  Oshima’s impressive first feature, a realist drama shot in black-and-white CinemaScope, sets a thematic template for much of the director’s work with its focus on crime, class, and socio-political repression. For not the last time in Oshima, the action centres on a scam: a teenaged boy, in order to raise money for his impoverished family, sells the same pigeon — a homing pigeon — over and over again. His con brings him into the orbit of a wealthy girl, and a friendship develops — until the girl discovers his “delinquent” ways. The movie’s optimistic title was imposed by the studio, Shochiku; Oshima had preferred “The Boy Who Sold His Pigeon.”  The studio’s head denounced the final film for its leftist politics — for “saying the rich and poor can never join hands.” Oshima was suspended for six months; the film was given only a limited release. (Oshima’s final break with Shochiku would come after Night and Fog in Japan, his fourth feature). “Powerful . . . Early Oshima is forever being compared with early Godard, but this debut feature (exactly contemporary with Breathless) shows that Oshima’s political acumen was a great deal stronger than Godard’s at this time” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 62 mins.