Filmed entirely in Japan, the Italian-produced Violated Paradise visits various big-city iniquities via the perambulations of Tomako (Kazuko Mine from Blind Spots of the Female Body), a young villager seeking her fortune as a geisha in a Tokyo teeming with strip clubs and prostitution. Along the way she takes in a coastal fishing village where dwells a potential love interest and topless pearl divers. Based on the writings and documentary films of Italian ethnologist Fosco Maraini, this proto-mondo feature was produced and directed by Russian-born Marion Gering, whose 1930's directorial career at Paramount (Madame Butterfly with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney, for one) was then a distant memory. With cringe-inducing narration read by jazz musician Paulette Girard (as Tomako) and mansplainer Tom Rowe.
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