| Yasuzō Masumura | |
| Birth Date: | 25 August 1924 |
| Birth Place: | Kōfu, Yamanashi, Japan |
| Death Place: | Japan |
| Occupation: | Film director, screenwriter |
was a Japanese film director.[1] [2]
Masumura was born in Kōfu, Yamanashi. After graduating from the law department at the University of Tokyo, he worked as an assistant director at the Daiei Film studio. He later returned to university to study philosophy and graduated in 1951. The following year, he won a scholarship allowing him to study film in Italy at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia under Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.[3]
Masumura returned to Japan in 1953. From 1955, he worked as a second-unit director on films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Daisuke Ito.[4] In 1957, he directed his own first film Kisses, which caused film critic (and future director) Nagisa Ōshima to note, "a powerful irresistible force has arrived in Japanese Cinema."[5] Over the next three decades, he directed 58 films in a variety of genres.[6]
According to film critic Shigehiko Hasumi, filmmaker Shinji Aoyama had declared Masumura "the most important filmmaker in the history of postwar Japanese cinema."[7]
| Title | Year | Credited as | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director! | Screenwriter | Assistant director | ||
| Princess Yang Kwei Fei | 1955 | |||
| Street of Shame | 1956 | |||
| Punishment Room | 1956 | |||
| Nihonbashi | 1956 | |||
| The Crowded Streetcar | 1957 | |||
| Kisses | 1957 | |||
| The Blue Sky Maiden | 1957 | |||
| Warm Current | 1957 | |||
| The Precipice | 1958 | |||
| Giants and Toys | 1958 | |||
| The Lowest Man | 1958 | |||
| Undutiful Street | 1958 | |||
| The Most Valuable Madam | 1959 | |||
| The Cast-Off | 1959 | |||
| Beauty the Enemy | 1959 | |||
| Across Darkness | 1959 | |||
| A Woman's Testament (first segment) | 1960 | |||
| Afraid to Die | 1960 | |||
| The Woman Who Touched the Legs | 1960 | |||
| A False Student | 1960 | |||
| Desperate to Love | 1961 | |||
| A Lustful Man | 1961 | |||
| A Wife Confesses | 1961 | |||
| The Burdened Sisters | 1961 | |||
| Stolen Pleasure | 1962 | |||
| Black Test Car | 1962 | |||
| Life of a Woman | 1962 | |||
| The Black Report | 1963 | |||
| When Women Lie | 1963 | |||
| Band of Pure-Hearted Hoodlums | 1963 | |||
| Modern Fraud Story: Cheat | 1964 | |||
| With My Husband's Consent | 1964 | |||
| Seventeen-year-old Wolf | 1964 | |||
| Manji | 1964 | |||
| Super-Express | 1964 | |||
| Hoodlum Soldier | 1965 | |||
| Seisaku's Wife | 1965 | |||
| Irezumi | 1966 | |||
| Nakano Spy School | 1966 | |||
| Red Angel (Movie) | 1966 | |||
| Two Wives | 1967 | |||
| A Certain Killer | 1967 | |||
| Just for You | 1967 | |||
| A Fool's Love | 1967 | |||
| The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka | 1967 | |||
| Evil Trio | 1968 | |||
| The Sex Check | 1968 | |||
| The House of Wooden Blocks | 1968 | |||
| One Day at Summer's End | 1968 | |||
| Blind Beast | 1969 | |||
| A Thousand Cranes | 1969 | |||
| Vixen | 1969 | |||
| Electric Jellyfish | 1970 | |||
| Ode to the Yakuza | 1970 | |||
| The Hot Little Girl | 1970 | |||
| Games | 1971 | |||
| New Hoodlum Soldier Story: Firing Line | 1972 | |||
| Music | 1972 | |||
| Hanzo the Razor The Snare | 1973 | |||
| Hanzo the Razor: Who's Got the Gold? | 1974 | |||
| Akumyo: Notorious Dragon | 1974 | |||
| Mainline to Terror | 1975 | |||
| Lullaby of the Earth | 1976 | |||
| The Love Suicides at Sonezaki | 1978 | |||
| The Garden of Eden | 1980 | |||
| For My Daughter's 7th Birthday | 1982 | |||