Northwest Film Forum

NISHI GINZA STATION will remind audiences of Jacques Demy and Frank Tashlin. The control of the Nikkatsu studio over the project was total; they commissioned a showcase film for hot singer Frank Nagai. Imamura pleaded tone deafness, but the studio retorted that he could make whatever film he wanted as long as the popular title song was repeated three times. A drugstore owner is seized by tropical island daydreams so vivid that he loses control of himself in public. His wife, fearing that he'll be unfaithful to her, asks another woman to look after him while she's away. The new couple wind up on a small boat in a storm, and soon think they've been blown all the way to his tropical isle. A wry comment on how thoroughly civilization has tamed our most libidinous fantasies, NISHI GINZA STATION is "the unexpected discovery" of the Imamura retrospective!