Woman on the Night Train
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Woman on the Night Train is a 1972 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Noboru Tanaka and starring Mari Tanaka.
Japanese critics noted the influence of European filmmakers on Tanaka's style.
The use of metaphor and symbolism in the film was said to be similar to some of Roger Vadim's films. Luis Buñuel's Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), and Octave Mirbeau's original novel were said to be particular influences on Woman on the Night Train.
In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, Thomas and Yuko Mihara Weisser give Woman on the Night Train a rating of three out of four stars. They judge the film's weakness to be the rambling and far-fetched plot, but they write that this is compensated for by Tanaka's visuals and camera work, which they call, "some of the best in any pink film". They also note the welcome influence of French cinema on Tanaka's style. They single out the flashback scene in which the father seduces the maid as indicative of Tanaka's visual flair. Rather than staging the scene in a mundane bedroom setting, Tanaka makes the seduction more shocking by filming it among the stuffy, professorial father's books and papers in his study.
