The Catch (1961) —Oshima’s Dogville (was Oshima the Von Trier of the ’60s?), in which an innocent, black GI becomes the scapegoat and outlet for a small town’s hypocrisy and rage during World War II. Oshima is, as usual, even more enraged—or rather, outraged—than his characters, as every problem the town has or can invent is excuse for the guy’s torture; as nearly every emotional state of each of the grotesque small towners is just a cover for blood-thirst. Oshima’s almost as interested in how simpletons find complex ways to justify themselves to themselves, as they diplomatically discuss terms of action: foreplay to the kill. Mostly, though, this is a lot of drunken fury (literally—compare Oshima’s drunks to Ozu’s, whose thoughts and emotions are directed inward instead), and fire-and-brimstone moralizing, probably right, that there’s no possibility of duty or love in a solipsistic post-war world—but didn’t Ozu and Naruse show the foundations cracking in actual everyday life? The style-play this time is long-take verité, with people coming in and out of doors, and everyone assembled at a distance in what’s either a forum or lynch mob or, most of the time, both. And there are the amazing last shots—the black-and-white fires in the night—including a few-minute take of the whole town throwing dirt onto a grave. Held and held and held and zoomed into the abstraction of hands and a hole, the shot has no choice but to take on symbolic weight of a whole policy and history of repression; the movie’s not just about bad people and deeds, but how they’re all covered up.