unemployed salarymen, an obsessive-compulsive doctor, and a lecherous, alcoholic monk were a few of his many protagonists. Imamura stated this on a number of occasions: If my films are messy, it is probably because I don't like too perfect a cinema. The audience must not admire the technical aspects of my filmmaking, as they would a computer or the laws of physics. Imamura continued: I love all the characters in my films, even the loutish and frivolous ones. I want every one of my shots to express this love. I'm interested in people, strong, greedy, humorous, deceitful people who are very human in their qualities and their failings. In integrating such a social view into a creative stance, Imamura – in an oblique fashion – does reflect the humanist formalism of earlier filmmakers – Ozu, and Kurosawa (whose Drunken Angel he cited as a primary inspiration), even when the episodic construction seems more akin to the global (and Japanese) New Wave. Thus, where Oshima would seem to strive for a radical break between old and new in Japanese cinema, figures like Imamura (and Seijun Suzuki) instead took older ideologies (and older, little-explored tangents), and helped create a Japanese New Wave that instead stood as an inevitable evolution in a dynamic cinema. Nagisa Oshima Nagisa Oshima was among the most prolific Japanese New Wave filmmakers, and – by virtue of having had several internationally successful films (notably 1960's Cruel Story of Youth, 1976's In the Realm of the Senses and 1983's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence), became one of the most famous filmmakers associated with the movement. Certain films – in particular Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth, Night and Fog in Japan (1960), and his later Death by Hanging (1968) – did generate enormous controversy (Night and Fog in Japan was pulled from theatres one week into its release). They also provoked debate, or – in some instances – became unexpected commercial successes. Violence at Noon (1966) received a nomination for the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Oshima's structural and political restlessness and willingness to disrupt cinematic formulas drew comparisons to Jean-Luc Godard – the two filmmakers emerged globally almost simultaneously, both were interested in altering the form and processes of cinema, both came from backgrounds as critics, both challenged definitions of cinema as entertainment by inserting their own political perspectives into their work. Oshima elaborated upon the comparison: I