Masumura studied film in Italy at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Center of Cinematography) in the early 1950s. Back in Japan, he worked as an assistant director to MIZOGUCHI Kenji at Daiei, whose Tokyo Studios he would subsequently remain at for most of his directing career. Deeply critical of the sentimentality and slow-moving nature of conventional Japanese movies, he instead made films characterized by their breakneck cutting and depictions of individuals who expressed themselves openly. His rapid-fire approach to dialogue was taken to its extreme in his 1959 work The Most Valuable Wife (Saiko shukun fujin). He made twenty films together with actor WAKAO Ayako, portraying an image of strong, resilient women in works such as The Wife's Confession (Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru, aka A Wife Confesses, 1961) and The Wife of Seisaku (Seisaku no tsuma, 1965). From around the midpoint of his career, he embarked on a series of weighty adaptations of the works of novelist TANIZAKI Jun'ichiro, including All Mixed Up (Manji, 1964), The Spider Tattoo (Irezumi, 1966), and A Fool's Love (Chijin no ai, 1967). A contemporary of MISHIMA Yukio during their time together at Tokyo University, he later directed the novelist in the Mishima-starring Afraid to Die (Karakkaze yaro, 1960), as well as basing his film Music (Ongaku, 1972) on Mishima's novel of the same name.

(Written by MIYAMOTO Noriaki / Reference: National Film Archive of Japan screening program / Translated by Adam Sutherland)