The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 1, 2025

In the main supplement included on this disc, the venerable Jasper Sharp gives a quick introduction covering the history and the differences between so called Roman Porno and Pinku eiga films, though for the uninitiated it may well be a difference without any real distinction. One way or the other, The Oldest Profession is an often tough to watch tale involving a 19 year old woman named Tome Marunishi (Meika Seri), whom the vagaries of fate have consigned to the "family business", or at least to the same working life as her mother Yone (Genshu Hanayagi), namely prostitution. Tome's home life also involves her developmentally delayed (adult) brother Saneo (Shiro Yumemura), and the film tends to deal with both the family dynamic that unfolds between this trio, as well as providing some linked sidebar characters, all within a context that initially seems to be at least cinéma vérité adjacent, but which takes some perhaps surprising stylistic turns, including suddenly morphing into color for a few minutes toward the end of the film.

The sex in this film is frequent, often violent, and probably not what most people would ever term "erotic" in any meaningful way. The film aptly documents the trials and tribulations of women living "in a man's world" but attempting to find some way to navigate the morass. Perhaps surprisingly given the overall sober demeanor of the proceedings, there's some jet black humor suffusing the piece, but even that can be tinged with hints of melancholy. The switch into color is probably intentionally disjunctive, but I'm frankly not sure of any real "meta" meaning to it all, and am reminded of the supposed critical analysis that attended Lindsay Anderson's If.... concerning its segues back and forth between color and black and white, exegeses which were hilariously undercut by Anderson himself when he revealed it was simply a budgeting issues, no "hidden meaning" intended.

The film features a number of standout performances, and Seri and Yumemura in particular are outstanding. The linked subplot involving others surrounding Tome also offer good moments for Moeko Exawa and Junko Miyashita.

The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Oldest Profession is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. Film Movement tends not to provide a ton of technical information with their releases, and that's once again the case here, though the insert booklet's "fine print" does state this was "restored in 4K from the 35mm master negative" (wow, master negative!), and some prefatory text provides just a bit more information, to whit:

Restored in 4K by Nikkatsu Corporation in 2021 from the 35mm original negatives. Work performed at Cineric in New York and LIsbon, with support from the Nikkatsu Chofu Studio.

This is a fantastic looking presentation for the most part, with probably the only real "issue" a baked in prevalence of some of the same anamorphic oddities that are frequently seen in any number of Japanese films, something I've regularly addressed in any number of reviews of Shaw Brothers productions in particular. Here it's mostly anamorphic squeezing, which seems to be a bit inconsistent, sometimes obvious at the expected edges of the frame, but quite frequently making even characters in the center of the frame look like stick figures. There are also a few examples of what I've termed "parallelogram syndrome", where the entire rectangle of the frame looks like it's been "bent" to resemble that other geometric shape, so that everything in the frame is slightly tilted or curved. Otherwise, though, both the black and white and color segment provide nice detail levels and generally consistent contrast and palette reproduction (the color vignette is perhaps intentionally pushed). There is some very minor age related wear and tear that can be spotted, but it's frankly miniscule. Grain resolves naturally.

The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Oldest Profession features LPCM 2.0 Mono audio in the original Japanese. The abundance of outdoor and at least intermittently somewhat urban settings provides the soundtrack with good uses of ambient environmental sounds, though the sound design can actually be on the "theatrical" side at time. Note, for example, how the opening cacophony of train (?) sounds just suddenly stops once the establishing shot appears. Occasional musical moments (including some singing) sound reasonably full bodied. All dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Private Business & Public Obscenities (HD; 14:47) is the aforementioned piece by Jasper Sharp, and is an excellent introduction covering both the film and its context.


• The Oldest Profession Trailer (HD; 1:17)

An About Film Movement option is also available on the Main Menu, which brings up a text box with information.

A nicely appointed insert booklet has a good essay by Alexander Lee.

The first pressing of this evidently had a slipcover. The review copy sent to me did not.

The Oldest Profession Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Without sounding too churlish, it's perhaps somewhat funny that a prostitute in this film mentions how women can basically make a living "lying on their backs", whereas many of the often provocative sexual encounters in this film document women being taken from the rear while bent over on their knees and arms. That may be just one subliminal indication of how "powerless" the women in the film appear to be. This obviously won't be a film for everyone, but it's a fascinating historical curio and it is certainly memorable (for better or worse). Technical merits are solid and the main supplement by Sharp very informative. Vis a vis the Sharp piece, he mentions how just a few years before this hardscrabble film featured Osaka, the city was host to Expo '70, which celebrated a futuristic Utopia of sorts, something that is more than ironic considering what's depicted in the film. (As your resident Sergio Mendes obsessive, Sergio and Brasil '66 were the big featured act at Expo '70, and there's a rather wild live album documenting their performance, where I've joked that it sound like Sergio's vocalists may have had a bit too much Saki the night before the show.) With caveats noted, Recommended.