Vengeance is Mine

A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern. More than just a true-crime tale, Vengeance Is Mine bares humanity’s snarling id.

After new, more cost-effective processes and color film stocks rendered VistaVision mostly obsolete in the United States, VistaVision technologies were sold overseas and deployed by filmmakers like Shōhei Imamura in 1970s Japan. 

Imamura's films also served as an important stylistic inspiration for Korean director Bong Joon Ho, highlighted in our spring film series "Three by Bong Joon Ho".

The film screens in a 35mm print courtesy of Janus Films.

Part of our VistaVision series. In Japanese with English subtitles.