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Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women
Jul. 24th, 2008 10:04 pmhttp://www.criterion.com/asp/boxed_set.asp?id=2001300
Release date: 10/21/08, available for pre-order now: Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women
Over the course of a three-decade, more than eighty film career, master cineaste Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) would return again and again to one abiding theme: the plight of women in male-dominated Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of socially conscious melodrama—two prewar (Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion), two postwar (Women of the Night, Street of Shame)—Mizoguchi introduces an array of compelling female protagonists, crushed or resilient, who are economically and spiritually deprived by their nation’s customs and traditions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.
I had the opportunity to see Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion, Life of Oharu, and The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums at the Pacific Film Archives two summers ago. Criterion evidently has gotten its hands on Mizoguchi's works at long last. Ugetsu came out two years ago, Sansho last year and now we get four heart-breakers in one boxed set!!!!
Anyone who has ever squee'd "Memoirs of A Geisha Changed My Life (TM)" should be made to watch Sisters of the Gion. It opens with a shot panning slowly through the open shoji of a house in disarray, packing cases, furniture in piles, the sounds of shouting. We discover the shouting is the cry of an auctioneer and bidders, and in the next room where the shot stops panning, the family whose goods are being sold have gathered. No special effects, no CGI, not even color film, but that's moviemaking, Mr. Pullings,* that's moviemaking!
Now if they'd just get Life of Oharu out on DVD!
*A cookie for anyone who gets that out-of-place reference.
Release date: 10/21/08, available for pre-order now: Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women
Over the course of a three-decade, more than eighty film career, master cineaste Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) would return again and again to one abiding theme: the plight of women in male-dominated Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of socially conscious melodrama—two prewar (Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion), two postwar (Women of the Night, Street of Shame)—Mizoguchi introduces an array of compelling female protagonists, crushed or resilient, who are economically and spiritually deprived by their nation’s customs and traditions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.
I had the opportunity to see Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion, Life of Oharu, and The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums at the Pacific Film Archives two summers ago. Criterion evidently has gotten its hands on Mizoguchi's works at long last. Ugetsu came out two years ago, Sansho last year and now we get four heart-breakers in one boxed set!!!!
Anyone who has ever squee'd "Memoirs of A Geisha Changed My Life (TM)" should be made to watch Sisters of the Gion. It opens with a shot panning slowly through the open shoji of a house in disarray, packing cases, furniture in piles, the sounds of shouting. We discover the shouting is the cry of an auctioneer and bidders, and in the next room where the shot stops panning, the family whose goods are being sold have gathered. No special effects, no CGI, not even color film, but that's moviemaking, Mr. Pullings,* that's moviemaking!
Now if they'd just get Life of Oharu out on DVD!
*A cookie for anyone who gets that out-of-place reference.
