LATE MIZOGUCHI: EIGHT FILMS, 1951-1956



Thread locked. Please refer to the individual threads for these releases if you wish to make comments:

52-53 Ugetsu monogatari + Oyū-sama

54-55 Sanshō dayū + Gion bayashi

56-57 Chikamatsu monogatari + Uwasa no onna

58-59 Akasen chitai + Yokihi

Sweet Jesus!

Thank you for the shot of Anju walking into the water!!

Oh what a start to 2007

4 films in the boxset? What are the other ones?

Will it come with a book? (Ofcourse.)

Impressive transfer. Nice work.

Nick, when can we expect this set (very much looking forward to this)?

Wow, what great news to wake up to. I'm seeing Sansho, myself, in a few hours at a nearby arty theater, so its also fairly weird at the same time.

Judging by MoC's preference to chronological order, and the fact that the contents of these two volumes are already known, I would say Sansho follows Miss Oyu, Ugetsu, and Gion Music Festival in the box. But that's just a guess.

But the understanding, now, is that there are five other titles to be released in a Mizoguchi set...and of the five films released after Sansho, MoC only has access to four. I suppose that is a topic for the speculation board, or something for Nick to address right here as we speak.

That looks great! looking forward to this set. I already own the Criterion release of Ugetsu, MoC will have to do a superb job to beat that edition.

Some of the films to be released in 2007:

Miss Oyu

Ugetsu Monogatari

Goin Festival Music

Sansho Dayu

The Woman of Rumour

Chikamatsu Monogatari

The Empress Yang Kwei Fei

Street of Shame

These are all the films remastered and released in Japan recently in the two Daiei box sets except for Shin Heike Monogatari. Was there any reason for leaving this out? (apart from it not being as good as the others).

Do you mean that Shin Heike Monogatari with Raizo Ichikawa was released in DVD recently? My understanding is that it was a multi-part series that never made it to DVD. Being based on the Yoshikawa novel, it might not quite fit in with what most Mizoguchi aficionados normally look for, but having a copy of part 1, I truly wish for the complete set.

Will this be a good blind buy? I bought the Criterion Ugetsu when it came out and while I enjoyed the film, I felt that it didn't quite equal Ozu or Kurosawa at their best. How does Sansho stack up against Ugetsu?

You can't go wrong!

There are some comments on this and other Mizoguchi films in the Mizoguchi thread. Sansho is an incredibly moving and beautiful film.

If you like classic Japanese films in general, and you enjoyed Ugetsu, then this is indeed a blind buy. I purchased Sansho and other Mizoguchi films last year from a French label, but you can be sure that I will get this set anyway (there will be films available in this set not before released with English subs, and the transfers will be a vast improvement, if the stills above can be trusted).

Hard to choose, and its also a problematic comparison between Kenji and Akira, the latter (in my opinion) being much more accessible to western sensibilities.

Shin Heike was, as Scharf commented, one of the nine titles released on the two French boxes 18 months or so ago - French title le Heros Sacrilege -(the ones with French subs, I don't know about the Films sans Frontieres editions with English subs.)

You really should go back over the various Mizo threads here - among other things there was some fairly spirited discussion about Mizo and form, including reference to other directors like Naruse and Ozu. I tend to agree with Michael Kerpan Shin Heike is a less favorite Mizo, largely because of its narative reliance on male heirarchical structures, and some of the performances. The color print was also farily ordinary, unlike Princess Yang Kwei Fei which is quite beautiful.

I got back to work this morning to find the Keaton shorts sitting on my desk. Quite by chance I flipped open the booklet on the coming releases pages - if it hadnt been for Nick's post here a day ago I would have fallen off the chair and started hollering in the office.

Re Sansho briefly - I certainly think it's a towering masterpiece. I've always felt the feudal episodes in the narrative mesh extremely successfully with the "melodramatic" elements. Even though I don't disagree with Michael K about Yoshiaki Hanayago's seemingly gormless performance as Zushio, but he still works for me at least insofar as the gormlessness is a part of his character, in fact I find it an intrinsic part of the complete physical and emotional abandonment of "civility" he displays in the final devastating scene with their mother.

I would say Sansho is definitely better than Ugetsu overall (though some of the sequences of Ugetsu are utterly gorgeous). I much prefer Chikamatsu monogatari (Crucified Lovers) to either (when it comes to M's historical films).

The thing that ultimately bugged me about Ugetsu - beautiful to look at and haunting as it was - were the plot contrivances and melodramatic elements (the samurai subplot and the neat resolution - it seems this Mizo was under studio pressure). I guess that's why I find Ozu so refreshing - he doesn't really rely on either.

While I thought Sansho was an incredibly touching film, I still prefer Ugetsu. I found Ugetsu to be one of the most beautiful and lyrical films I've seen. Perhaps reading up on Sansho ruined my initial viewing slightly (ever so slightly).

Having said that, both of them are still among my favourite films of all time.

I wonder which of these titles Criterion has in their sights? If any (other than Sansho).

Can't wait for this box... and Volume Two... and Naruse Volume Two...

One needs to remember that many of Mizoguchi's films were based on fairly well-known literary or dramatic sources. In films like Sansho and Crucified Lovers, his audiences would have come into the theater with a basic knowledge of the plot. As with the ancient Athenian dramatists, it is the manner of presentation that matters most with Mizoguchi (not plots -- or Hollywood-style "suspense").

Yeah - fair call - the plot of Ugetsu is rather schematic, but I guess it's understandable given the source materials.

IMO if one is not engaged at any point of one's life with the sensation of picking up on the vibe of the memories of so many lives which have travelled the same roads, physical and metaphorical, as ones own, saluted the humanity of their vanished errors and their vanished triumphs, boredoms, strains, terrors, etc etc, and pondered on the vague and very melancholic sense of communing somehow with that past with all it's unredeemed errors, then certainly one is going to miss what to me and others is the paramount beauty of UGETSU MONOGATARI: beyond the Murnau/Sternbergian photographic lyricism of the images in the haunted castle, on the lake, beyond the pathos of the suffering of the characters and the limpid beauty of the mise en scene, is the poetic triumph of the ending. Really in my mind the crown jewel of the film is it's final haunted monologue of the vaguely hazy interaction of the dead and the living, the attempt to make sense of the separation and it's attendant confusion via terrible decisions and random circumstance. The ending of the film to me, more than any other, captures the feeling one gets when walking through an old and busy land filled with disappeared dramas, and the sense of the dead hanging vaguely-- but not really, but then again...-- over the scene, creating a feeling, not really haunted, but somehow melancholic and enjoyable at the same time. That sad sense of finding peace with answerlessness. Life itself, very simply.

This haunted equanimity with the facts of life and death truly soak the film from beginning to end, and those not predisposed to pick up on it are going to simply study the photography and mise en scene and be slightly baffled over all the hubub "...lyrical film ever made etc".

It's impossioble to answer this because it's so personally felt, but I would only say Ugetsu is just as great to me as Sansho. They both carry all sorts of styles and forms from traditional Japanese performance and dramatic styles, and they are both immediately moving to a western audience (as well as a Japanes one) and - to this westerner's eyes - Ugetsu is as moving and incomparable as Sansho BECAUSE of its formal beauty.

Take any random sequence from Mizo and look at it out of context (as I did when I had to recall the mise en scene of Anju's suicide in Sansho). Every second of time vibrates with meaning at so many levels, all of it completely dependent on the form of expression. In that case Mizo's choice to film the suicide and Anju's dilemma as a series of static compositions in which stillness is paramount, rendered through a simple decoupage. Yet every other major sequence in Sansho, including the rises in status of Zushio, and the staggering final scene with the blind mother are taken in characteristically Mizoguchian plan sequences, with - at the end - his signature crane up, with the accompaniment of a singing shakahachi and percussion. He chooses the static/pictorialist decoupage for Anju perhaps out of profound respect for the the narrative and character at this point, as much as he does for the sake of total identification with the character.

But anyway, yes Schreck I think Ugetsu is staggering too.

Again - is this transcendental? Im still waiting for a definition.

One point I'd take exception to is the sense that this is all personally felt-- the sense of the innate sensitivity to one's elders, one's smallness in a large universe, and one's lack of importance versus the felt maelstrom of time immemorial and All Human Life Gone Before (resulting in a deeprooted automatic respect for one's elders, whereas we chuck our elders into nursing homes & forget about them) is very innate in Japanese custom and completely alien in Western. The routes to quiet harmony, equanimity and respect for basic facts which occidentals generally go down in flames kicking and screaming versus (causing them to be ego-bound and loud rather than humble and desirous to be seen as quiet) are so ingrained in Japanese culture and life (in the sense that western philosophy & christianity are rooted in western) that the mise en scene & decoupage operates in a very oriental mode of spiritual expression and points of sensitivity, with "consciously beautiful" mise en scene and decoupage functioning as mood enhancers and point-drivers.

The point I'm trying to make is in Ozu & Mizo one finds sensitivities to ideas of "ancestry" "ghosts" "humility" "finding peace in disorder" etc-- as I outlined in my above post-- that are patently reminiscent of the Taoist/Buddhist awareness and contemplation of elders, the deceased, and equanimity that flavor Japanese culture. Present day breakdancers & westernized Asshole Culture excepted of course.

David, with respect, that sounds like quite a large spoiler in your post. I haven't seen Sansho yet and am hoping to forget what I just read before this comes out...

I could wish that The 47 Ronin was a solid proposition for the future.

Jt, sorry if you thought that but I think I can safely say any comments in my post won't really prepare you for the movie itself.

While I appreciate the concern of many with narrative "spoilers" I honestly think even a complete foreknowledge of the plot in Mizos films is quite secondary to the experience of viewing them over and over again. Just like Ozus. But I will take care in future.