Kenji Mizoguchi Films

Despite being regarded as outdated and old-fashioned in Japan (alongside his immediate contemporary Yasujiro Ozu), Kenji Mizoguchi was lauded throughout Europe from the early 50s and many of his films are today recognized as true masterpieces.

Esteemed film scholar David Bordwell once called Kenji Mizoguchi(1898-1956) “arguably film his... show more >

Despite being regarded as outdated and old-fashioned in Japan (alongside his immediate contemporary Yasujiro Ozu), Kenji Mizoguchi was lauded throughout Europe from the early 50s and many of his films are today recognized as true masterpieces.

Esteemed film scholar David Bordwell once called Kenji Mizoguchi(1898-1956) “arguably film history’s greatest exponent of staging,” and while the Japanese filmmaker is justifiably renowned for his long takes, exquisite compositions, and graceful camera movements, his pictorial prowess ultimately provokes deep emotional awareness.

Mizoguchi – whose dramatic personal life included a sister sold as a geisha, a wife confined to a mental institution, and a reputation for heavy drinking and ferocious perfectionism – began directing films in the 1920s, most of which no longer survive. He specialized in feminine melodramas that emphasized the sacrificial plight of women (geishas, prostitutes, vagabonds) forced to conform to the demands of a patriarchal society. He hit his mature stride in 1936 with Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion (both co-written by Yoshikata Yoda, who would remain his primary writer) but it was his trio of Golden Lion-winning late masterpieces – The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), and Sansho Dayu (1954) – that introduced Mizoguchi (and his star, Kinuyo Tanaka) to the international stage. Coming just a few years after Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), it awakened the West to the untapped riches of Japanese cinema, and Mizoguchi quickly became, along with Kurosawa and Ozu, the name most widely associated with Japan’s finest contributions to humanist cinema.

Other masterpieces followed, including Chikamatsu Monogatari (Crucified Lovers) in 1954 and Akasen Chitai (Street of Shame) in 1956, further assuring Mizoguchi’s reputation as a craftsman of the highest order with an uncommon empathy for the social and psychological travails of his indelible heroines.
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