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Home , Film Comment, Kazuo Miyagawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masayuki Mori (actor), Osaka Elegy, Sansho the Bailiff

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“One of the greatest experiences of cinema.” —DAVE KEHR

“Quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers,” said Jean-Luc Godard of . And , a ghost story like no other, is surely the Japanese director’s supreme achievement. Derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, this haunting tale of love and loss— with its exquisite blending of the otherworldly and the real— is one of the most beautiful films ever made.

Japan • 1953 • 97 minutes • Black & White • 1.33:1 aspect ratio • In Japanese with English subtitles • Screening format: DCP

ABOUT THE RESTORATION This new 4K digital restoration was undertaken by the Film Foundation and Kadokawa Corporation at Cineric Laboratories in New York. Special thanks to Masahiro Miyajima and for their consultation on this restoration. Restoration funding was provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in association with the Film Foundation and Kadokawa Corporation.

Booking Inquiries: Janus Films Press Contact: Courtney Ott [email protected] • 212-756-8761 [email protected] • 646-230-6847 KENJI MIZOGUCHI Kenji Mizoguchi created a cinema rich in technical mastery and social commentary, specifically regarding the place of women in Japanese society. After an upbringing marked by poverty and abuse, Mizoguchi found solace in art, trying his hand at both oil painting and theater set design before, at the age of twenty-two in 1920, enrolling as an assistant director at Nikkatsu studios. By the midthirties, he had developed his craft by directing dozens of movies in a variety of genres, but he would later say that he didn’t consider his career to have truly begun until 1936, with the release of the companion films and , about women both professionally and romantically trapped. Japanese film historian called Gion “one of the best FROM THE OTHER SHORE Japanese films ever made.” Over the next By Phillip Lopate decade, Mizoguchi made such wildly different tours de force as The Story Often appearing on lists of the ten fluent, entertaining studio films before of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939), The greatest films of all time, called one of arriving at his lyrical, rigorous visual style 47 Ronin (1941–42), and Women of the most beautiful films ever made, and patented tragic humanism, around the Night (1948), but not until 1952 or the most masterful work of Japanese the age of forty. His first masterworks did he break through internationally, cinema, Ugetsu comes to us awash in were a pair of bitterly realistic films, with The Life of Oharu, a poignant tale superlatives. No less acclaimed has made in 1936, on the subject of modern of a woman’s downward spiral in an been its maker, Kenji Mizoguchi: “Like women’s struggles, Sisters of the unforgiving society. That film paved Bach, Titian, and Shakespeare, he is the Gion and Osaka Elegy. These breakthroughs the road to half a decade of major greatest in his art,” enthused the French led to the classic Story of the Last artistic and financial successes for critic ; and not far behind Chrysanthemum (1939), set in the Meiji Mizoguchi, including the masterful were Jean-Luc Godard, who declared him era, about a actor who stubbornly ghost story Ugetsu (1953) and “the greatest of Japanese filmmakers, hones his craft with the aid of his all-too- the gut-wrenching drama Sansho or quite simply one of the greatest of sacrificing lover. In this film, Mizoguchi the Bailiff (1954), both flaunting filmmakers,” and the New York Times critic perfected his signature “flowing scroll,” extraordinarily sophisticated Vincent Canby, who extolled him as “one shot–one scene” style of long- compositions and camera movement. “one of the great directors of the sound duration takes, which, by keeping the The last film Mizoguchi made before era.” In other words, Mizoguchi belongs camera well back, avoiding close-ups, his death at age fifty-eight was Street of in the same exalted company as Jean and linking the characters to their Shame (1956), a shattering exposé set in Renoir, , Carl Dreyer, Alfred environment, generated hypnotic tension a bordello that played an important role Hitchcock, Max Ophuls, Sergei Eisenstein, and psychological density. During the in the outlawing of prostitution in . , and (who early forties, the director was hampered Few filmmakers can claim to have had looked up to the older man as his master). by the Japanese studios’ war propaganda such impact. This near-unanimous reverence for effort, though he did make a stately, both Ugetsu and Mizoguchi among world two-part version of The 47 Ronin. After filmmakers and critics may be puzzling to the war ended, he turned to a series of the American moviegoing public, for whom intense pictures advocating progressive, CAST both names remain relatively unfamiliar. democratizing ideals, which fell in with Lady Wakasa Machiko Kyo In order to understand what the fuss is the occupation’s values while wobbling Genjuro about, we may need to take a step back aesthetically between subtle refinement Miyagi from these superlatives, or at least put and hammy melodrama. them in context. Tobei Sakae Ozawa Then, in the fifties, he regained his Ohama Mitsuko Mito Mizoguchi (1898–1956) began his career touch and created those sublimely Ukon Kikue Mori in the silent era and made dozens of flowing, harrowing masterpieces Mizoguchi in a determinedly unglamorous, non-movie-star way.) The second couple are a peasant, Tobei, who assists Genjuro in his trade but would rather become a , and his shrewish wife, Ohama, who ridicules her husband’s fantasies of military glory. In this “gender tragedy,” if you will, the men pursue their aggressive dreams, bringing havoc on themselves and their wives. Still, the point is underlined that these men don’t want to escape their wives; they only want to triumph in the larger world, so as to return to their wives made into bigger men by boastworthy adventures and costly presents. Are we to take it, then, that the moral of the film is: better stay at home, cultivate your garden, nose to the grindstone? No. Mizoguchi’s viewpoint is not cautionary but realistic: this is the way human beings are, never satisfied; everything changes, that represent the pinnacle of his Mizoguchi engaged with the past not to life is suffering, one cannot avoid one’s directorial achievement: The Life of recapture nostalgically some lost model fate. If they had stayed home, they might Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953), A Story from of serenity but, if anything, to reveal the just as easily have been killed by pillaging Chikamatsu (1954), (1954), opposite. In preparing Ugetsu, he was soldiers. The fact that they chose to leave New Tales of the Taira Clan (1955), and drawn to sixteenth-century chronicles gives us a plot, and some ineffably lovely, (1956). Except for the about civil wars and their effect on the heartbreaking sequences. last, these pictures were all set in earlier common people. As a starting point, he and times: Mizoguchi, drawing on Saikaku, screenwriter adapted two The celebrated Lake Biwa episode, where Chikamatsu, and other classical writers, tales from an eighteenth-century collection the two couples come upon a phantom had become a specialist in the past, of ghost stories, Akinari Ueda’s Ugetsu boat in the mists, is surely one of the most reinterpreting national history as much as, monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain), lyrical anywhere in cinema. Edited to create say, , and insisting, like Luchino retaining much of the imagery while altering a stunningly uncanny mood, it also prepares Visconti, on accurate historical detail, elements of the stories. The perennially us for the supernatural elements that follow. borrowing props, , suits of armor dissatisfied Mizoguchi stressed in his notes The dying sailor on the boat is not a ghost, from museums and private collectors. He to the long-suffering Yoda: “The feeling of though the travelers at first take him for attributed his fascination with traditional wartime must be apparent in the attitude one; he warns them, particularly the women, Japanese culture partly to his own of every character. The violence of war to beware of attacking pirates, another relocation from to the area. unleashed by those in power on a pretext ominous foreshadowing. of the national good must overwhelm the No doubt, some of Mizoguchi’s belated It is the movie’s supreme balancing act to common people with suffering—moral and international renown (he won Venice be able to move seamlessly between the physical. Yet the commoners, even under Film Festival prizes three years in realistic and the otherworldly. Mizoguchi these conditions, must continue to live and a row, for The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, achieves this feat by varying the direction eat. This theme is what I especially want to and Sansho the Bailiff) had to do with between a sober, almost documentary, emphasize here. How should I do it?” satisfying the West’s taste for an exoticized, long-distance view of mayhem and several traditional Japan. But he also fit the profile Ugetsu ended up concentrating on two carefully choreographed set pieces, such as of the brilliant, uncompromising (a couples. The main pair are a poor potter, the phantom ship. A particularly wrenching perfectionist who would demand hundreds Genjuro, who is eager to make war profits scene involves the potter taking leave of his of retakes and move a house several feet by selling his wares to the competing wife and son: the pattern of cuts between to improve the vista). Also, his moving- armies, and his devoted wife, Miyagi, who the husband on the boat, moving off, camera, long-shot aesthetic exemplified would prefer he stay at home with their and the wife running along the shore, the Bazinian mise-en-scène aesthetic little boy and not take chances on the road. waving, comes to concentrate more and that the young critics (The acting between these two is beyond more on her stricken, prescient awareness were championing, and anticipated the exquisite: the brooding Masayuki Mori, of what lies ahead (he, still having no idea, widescreen filmmaking of Michelangelo who played Genjuro, and the incomparable does not deserve our scrutiny). Later, the Antonioni, Miklós Jancsó, , Kinuyo Tanaka, cast as his wife, were two bestial behavior of the hungry, marauding and others. of Japan’s greatest actors, though filmed by soldiers coming upon the potter’s wife is shot from above, with a detached inevitability down from above as Lady Wakasa leans over the hut, resting at last on the patient, that makes the savagery more matter-of-fact, Genjuro to seduce him, as though to convey tranquil Miyagi, who we had assumed the soldiers pathetically staggering about his fear and desire, while we are practically was dead, having seen her speared earlier. in the background (an effect that must have in the mud with Tobei as he crawls along on We are relieved, as is Genjuro, to see her inspired Godard and François Truffaut in his belly, before witnessing his big break— preparing a homecoming meal for her their distanced shoot-outs). the enemy general’s suicidal beheading, for husband and mending his while he which he will take credit. sleeps. On awaking, he discovers that his Mizoguchi’s artistry reaches its pinnacle in wife is indeed dead; it appears he has again the eerie sequences between Genjuro and Just as the camera’s image field keeps been taken in by a woman ghost. The sole Lady Wakasa. Bolerolike music underscores changing (without ever losing its elegantly consolation is that we (and presumably the giddy progression by which the humble apt compositional sense), so too do our Genjuro) continue to hear the ghost of potter is lured to the noblewoman’s house, sympathies and moral judgments shift Miyagi’s voice, as she watches her husband is seduced by her, and experiences the from character to character. No doubt, approvingly at his potter’s wheel, noting ecstasy of paradise, only to learn that he has Genjuro is right to want to escape the that he has finally become the man of her fallen in love with a ghost. Machiko Kyo, clutches of his ghostly mistress, yet she ideals, though admitting that it is a pity one of Japan’s screen goddesses, plays Lady has given him nothing but happiness and they no longer occupy the same world. Wakasa with white makeup that resembles is justified in feeling betrayed by him. One might say that Mizoguchi’s detached, a mask and slithery movements Tobei is something of a clown, a buffoon, accepting eye also resembles that of a along the floor like those of a woman fox. yet his pain is real enough when, puffed ghost, looking down on mortal confusions, Interestingly, she seduces Genjuro as much up with samurai vanity, he finds his wife ambitions, vanities, and regrets. While all with her flattery of his pottery as with her working in a brothel. The complex camera appearances are transitory and unstable dangerous beauty. Previously, we have seen movement that follows Ohama from in his world, there is also a powerfully Genjuro (a surrogate for the director?) berating a customer to stumbling upon anchoring stillness at its core, a spiritual obsessed with his pot making, but it is only the open-jawed Tobei, and the ensuing strength no less than a virtuoso artistic when Lady Wakasa compliments him on passage in which she struggles between focus. The periodic chants of the monks, these objects, which she has been collecting, anger, shame, and happiness at being the droning and the bells, the Buddhist that he appreciates himself in this light, reunited with him, demonstrate the way sutras on Genjuro’s back, the landscapes making the telling comment, “The value that this director’s compassionate, if bitter, surrounding human need allude to this of people and things truly depends on moral vision and his choice of camera unchanging reality side by side with, their setting.” In so doing, he embraces angle reinforce each other. Mizoguchi’s or underneath, the restlessly mutable. Mizoguchian aesthetics, while she raises formalism and humanism are part of a Rooted in historical particulars, Ugetsu him from artisan to artist, putting them single unified expression. is a timeless masterpiece. on a more equal social footing. Their love Perhaps the most striking instance of this affair plays out in the rectangular castle transcendent tenderness comes toward of shoji-screened rooms, around an open Phillip Lopate’s latest book is A Mother’s Tale. He the end, when Genjuro returns home courtyard, an architectural setting much has written extensively on the movies for the Criterion from his journey, looking for his wife: the Collection, , Cineaste, and the New more aristocratically formal than the village camera inscribes a 360-degree arc around York Times, and is a professor at Columbia University. sequences. There is also a breathtakingly audacious shot that tracks from night to day, starting with the two of them in a bath together, then moving across a dissolve and an open field, to pick them up picnicking and disporting in the garden. As Mizoguchi’s great cinematographer, , stated in a 1992 interview, they used a crane 70 percent of the time in filming Ugetsu. The camera, almost constantly moving—not only laterally but vertically—conveys the instability of a world where ghosts come and go, life and death flow simultaneously into each other, and everything is, finally, transient, subject to betrayal. At her wedding to Genjuro, Lady Wakasa sings: “The finest silk / Of choicest hue / May change and fade away / As would my life / Beloved one / If thou shouldst prove untrue.” The camera’s viewpoint is always emotionally significant: we look