The Films of Kenji Mizoguchi

The comparisons are as inevitable as they are unfashionable, wrote James Quandt, introducing the centenary retrospective of the films of Kenji Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi is cinema's Shakespeare, its Bach or Beethoven, its Rembrant, Titian or Picasso. If this remains a minority opinion, it's not because others have tried him and found him wanting. Mizoguchi is either admired or ignored. If he is, as I believe, the greatest of Japanese directors, then he has eluded general recognition as such only through unpropitious circumstances. - Senses of Cinema

Films in the series

Sansho the Bailiff

This is one of the greats, and I'm too much in awe of it to say much more than: See it--as often as you can. Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film is the story of a family torn apart by political upheavals in 11th-century Japan--the children sold into slavery, the mother made a courtesan, the father lost. Mizoguchi looks out on utter devastation, but gathers the threads of his narrative--the visual and aural motifs, the sublime camera movements--to weave a final image of affirmation, transcendence, eternity.- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader (125m, in Japanese with subtitles)

Utamaro and His Five Women

Kenji Mizoguchi's biography of the famed Japanese wood block painter is perhaps his most erotic and autobiographical work. Minosuke BandÙ stars as the eponymous painter who finds fulfillment in painting five beautiful women, all of whom are seeking at least as much freedom as can be achieved in their oppressive society. With its spectacularly expressive mise-en-scene and long, fluid sequence shots, Mizoguchi's film reveals the life of an artist whose goals clearly echoed his own. (1946, 106m)

The Story of Last Chrysanthemums

This film stars Kakuko Mori as Otoku, the lowly wet-nurse of a powerful family of kabuki actors. When Otoku and one of the family members begin to see each other, his father forbids the relationship because of her low status. Director Kenji Mizoguchi extracts the sentimentality from this exceptionally moving story, which is perhaps his most complete development of one of his favorite themes: a woman who sacrifices everything for the gifted man she loves. (1939, 142m, in Japanese with English subtitles)

Street of Shame

The Japanese title is Akasen Chitai; literally, Red Light District. As rumors buzz about an impending anti-prostitution law, the lives of the hookers of Tokyo s Dreamland brothel unfold from bespectacled housewife Michiyo Kogure to yen-counting Ayako Wakao, to veteran period heroine Machiko Kyo s raucously Americanized Mickey. Mizoguchi s last film before his death from leukemia and a reputedly important influence on Japan s anti-prostitution laws passed the following year. - Film Forum (1956, in Japanese with English subtitles)

Sisters of Gion

The masterpiece of Kenji Mizoguchi's prewar period, a subtle and compact film (1936) that locates Mizoguchi's concern with the transitions of Japanese society in a conflict between two geisha sisters--one a pragmatist, the other a believer in tradition. - Chicago Reader (69m, in Japanese with English subtitles)

The Life of Oharu

The first film of director Kenji Mizoguchi's great mid-1950s period, THE LIFE OF OHARU won the International Prize at Venice in 1952, catapulting him onto the international scene after more than 30 years of filmmaking. The film, set in 17th-century Japan, is based on a well-known novel that Mizoguchi transforms into a tragic tale of an aged courtesan recounting her life in a series of extended flashbacks. Although some prefer UGETSU, Mizoguchi considered this to be his finest film. (1952, 146m, in Japanese with English subtitles)