Eclipse from the Criterion Collection

Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women

Edition no. 13

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Release Date: Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Country of Release: USA
MSRP: $59.95

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Osaka Elegy | Sisters of the Gion | Women of the Night | Street of Shame

Licensor Information

Shochiku, Kadokawa Herald Pictures

Directed by: Kenji Mizoguchi

Featuring: Isuzu Yamada, Kinuyo Tanaka, Machiko Kyo, Yoko Umemura, Sanae Takasugi, Aiko Mimasu, Chiyoko Okura, Shiganoya Bendo, Tomie Tsunoda, Ayako Wakao, Shinhachiro Asaka, Kazuko Hisano, Mitsuo Nagata, Michiyo Kogure, Benkei Shiganoya, Fumio Okura, Yasuko Kawakami, Eitarô Shindô, Taizo Fukami, Kunio Tamura, Kenji Sugawara, Seiichi Takegawa, Sakurako Iwama, Bontaro Miake, Takashi Shimura, Somenosuke Hayashiya, Toranosuke Ogawa

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 Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of social consciousness—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 forced by their conditions and culture into compromising positions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.

Year: 1936 | 1948 | 1956
Time: 71 | 69 | 74 | 85 min.