Kenji Mizoguchi

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hearthesilence
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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#301 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Dec 27, 2017 9:50 pm

Donald Trampoline wrote:Is there any good writing on the 47 Ronin in print? Looking for historical background of its making (analyzing the war/politics of the time). Or like a great Mizoguchi book (is there one?) that may have a chapter or few good pages on this.
FWIW, Fred Camper write a lengthy review for the Chicago Reader and Richard Brody had this to say in a New Yorker piece he did on Mizoguchi:
“The 47 Ronin” is, simply, one of the great political films of all time. It’s the story of a group of samurai whose lord has been put to death—ordered to commit hara-kiri—by the shogun, and whose castle has been confiscated. The warriors of the title take it upon themselves to avenge the injustice and to oppose the confiscation—to stand up to the unjust yet unquestioned authority of a dictatorial regime and yet, at the same time, to remain true to the samurai code of honor. It’s an extraordinary balancing act that Mizoguchi pulls off. To satisfy the wartime norms of the day, he exalts classical Japanese warriors as self-sacrificing men of unimpeachable principle, and yet he emphasizes their fidelity to their conscience and their spirit of resistance. It’s a man’s world, the world of the samurai. Yet Mizoguchi builds the story to a crescendo of nobility and bloodshed through the intervention of a woman, the fiancée of one of the samurai, whose romantic concerns—though feared to be destructive of the samurai spirit—prove to be as noble, as principled, as courageous, as civic-minded, and as grand as those of the warriors.

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whaleallright
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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#302 Post by whaleallright » Mon Jan 01, 2018 10:03 pm

Donald Trampoline wrote:Is there any good writing on the 47 Ronin in print? Looking for historical background of its making (analyzing the war/politics of the time). Or like a great Mizoguchi book (is there one?) that may have a chapter or few good pages on this.
Chapter six of Darrell Davis's excellent Picturing Japaneseness is entirely about 47 Ronin—its plot, style, and political meaning(s).

I wish I could recommend an English-language book on Mizoguchi's entire career, but the existing ones are pretty mediocre, I think. The chapter on Mizoguchi in David Bordwell's Figures Traced in Light is illuminating (heh) although it only talks about 47 Ronin in passing, really. There's a book-length English translation of Sato Tadao's writing on Mizoguchi that, unfortunately, is an unholy mess.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#303 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jan 02, 2018 12:49 am

There's a good book on Mizoguchi's early films by Donald Kirihara (who studied under Bordwell, I think) called Patterns of Time. I don't believe it gets up to the war-time films, however.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#304 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:46 pm

I saw the new 4k restoration of Tales of the Taira Clan at MoMA tonight. Up until now good prints were hard to come by (I think 16mm prints were fairly common at Mizoguchi retrospectives), but this new DCP looks quite excellent.

It's not in the same league as Mizoguchi's masterworks, but the use of color is fairly striking, particularly one epic scene where an army of monks dash through a forest, with each person wielding a torch. The contrast between the flames and the cool, green vegetation is all the more stunning because it's real - there really are hundreds of torches being rushed through a forest, and it's all the more impressive that they didn't burn anything down. (A Hollywood production today would never pull off the same feat - even if they were game, the safety regulations alone would prevent them from trying.)

Also notable for launching Ichikawa Raizō's film career - he died from cancer 12 years later at the age of 37, but to this day he remains an acting legend in Japan.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#305 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:32 pm

The women in Taira Clan are much more interesting than the men -- but get relatively little screen time. I hope a subbed Blu-Ray finally shows up (never was an English-subbed DVD, so far as I know).

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#306 Post by longstone » Tue Apr 17, 2018 1:38 am

The French DVD set ( Films sans Frontieres ) has English sub titles in addition to the French subs, haven't watched it in a while , think it was pretty average quality so a decent Blu-ray would be welcome.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#307 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:40 am

I have a French DVD set, but it must be a different one -- only French subs...

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L.A.
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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#308 Post by L.A. » Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:26 am

longstone wrote:The French DVD set ( Films sans Frontieres ) has English sub titles in addition to the French subs, haven't watched it in a while , think it was pretty average quality so a decent Blu-ray would be welcome.
Two-disc edition, also included is the lengthy documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director by Kaneto Shindo with English subs.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#309 Post by tenia » Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:38 am

Just a reminder : FSF releases are mostly illegal releases since its owner (Galeshka Moravioff, though this isn't his real name) most of the time don't pay the required fees to get hold of the distribution rights. Though I suppose he might have paid for one or two, he hasn't for the Mizoguchi, so the DVD releases aren't legal.

Carlotta posted recently about the case of these Mizoguchi movies, because some French cinemathèque were showing 2 of the concerned films, giving Moravioff the opportunity to act like any legitimate distributor while he definitely isn't.

I of course don't want to point fingers at anyone buying these, just to remind this so that new potential buyers might be aware of the situation.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#310 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:29 pm

FYI, if you're in NYC and want to see the new 4k restoration of Tales of the Taira Clan, you have one more chance as MoMA is screening it tonight at 7pm. It was nearly a full house when I went but it was a weekend and it didn't sell out, so as long as you get there by 7, you should be good.

(I should add that MoMA appears to take MoviePass too.)

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andyli
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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#311 Post by andyli » Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:07 am

This might be the best place to post it. Kadokawa is issuing the 4K restored Street of Shame on blu-ray next February. With this speed Tales of the Taira Clan could be the very next.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#312 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 01, 2019 6:08 pm

This afternoon I got to see Michael Kerpan's favorite, Street of Shame, in a 4k restoration. I had not seen it before. I liked it very much. But it still didn't climb over Ugetsu and Sansho for me. What works for me about Mizoguchi's work is how strong the characters are developed. His stories always feel like they are so personal to him. Street of Shame is no different. This is why he is my favorite amongst his fellow countrymen and in my top ten overall.

The 4k looked very strong and consistent. Perhaps this will be making an escape from the Eclipse and into the main line.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#313 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2019 6:22 pm

Street of Shame _was_ my favorite -- before I saw Chikamatsu monogatari. I still like it a lot overall (but not one of its subplots -- the one about the older prostitute with the awful son).

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#314 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 01, 2019 6:26 pm

That is a bit harsh. But I have to wonder if Mizoguchi based that subplot on something he himself experienced or someone he knows experienced.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#315 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2019 6:31 pm

I felt that subplot just didn't work as well as the others (which were all also quite dark). Too conventionally melodramatic, perhaps.

I think I may now like his other late prostitution film Uwasa no onna a bit more overall (partly because it features my favorite Tanaka performance for Mizoguchi).

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#316 Post by tenia » Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:37 am

I've heard there was a 4K restoration of Street of Shame around, but I have yet to find concrete proof of that. Capricci in France mentioned their retrospective and then BD boxset would use it, except their boxset now mentions it's a 2K restoration, but it really is the same HD master than Eureka. Instant tell-tale sign : in interior shots, any darker area was plagued with heavy noise/grain, as if sourced from an IP.

I however haven't seen it in theaters, so can't state if the theatrical run used the newer restoration and the BD release doesn't, but it makes me very curious about it. The retro matches the 8 movies released by Eureka, with 3 4K restorations (Chikamatsu, Ugetsu and Sansho), the others being in 2K, but so far, all the 2K movies in the boxset are actually the same older HD masters.
I however saw Sansho's new restoration in theaters and it looked very good (though it's far from being the best 4K restoration I've seen).

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#317 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Nov 02, 2019 2:06 pm

Tenia, I saw this at the Film Forum. It was advertised as a 4k restoration. What is interesting is there was no Janus logo at the beginning. It went right to the Daiei Studios logo. Which I found curious.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#318 Post by tenia » Sat Nov 02, 2019 5:56 pm

Thanks for the details. I'll try to track details down. Did it have any technical text panel before the movie started ? And was the openong credits scratched or not ?
As I said, I'm trying to find out if there really were new restorations for those and if the french label screwed up or not, so every little helps !

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#319 Post by htom » Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:08 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sat Nov 02, 2019 2:06 pm
Tenia, I saw this at the Film Forum. It was advertised as a 4k restoration. What is interesting is there was no Janus logo at the beginning. It went right to the Daiei Studios logo. Which I found curious.
The 4K restoration was released in February on Blu-ray, and also was screened in Japan as part of a Machiko Kyo retrospective about the same week.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#320 Post by tenia » Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:47 pm

Yes, I've been snooping around to find more data about this and stumbled on these 2 elements. I'll try to find a demo reel of the resto or a restored trailer to find and access the difference between this and the older master.
And I definitely need to ask what happened to the French label who advertised the 4K resto then a 2K one only to use the old HD master.

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Kenji Mizoguchi

#321 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Nov 04, 2019 6:41 pm

tenia wrote:Did it have any technical text panel before the movie started ? And was the openong credits scratched or not ?
No technical text was displayed. I didn’t see one scratch or blemish throughout any of it. It really did look very solid.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#322 Post by tenia » Tue Nov 05, 2019 2:37 am

Thanks for this. The older master has tons of dust and scratches all the way through which was a tell-tale sign the French label re-used it.

EDIT : Imagica indeed restored it in 4K.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#323 Post by FilmSnob » Tue Dec 28, 2021 6:42 pm

Well I finished Mizoguchi's filmography and these were the Mizo's I liked:

The Water Magician
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum
The Life of Oharu
Ugetsu
Sansho the Bailiff
Princess Yang Kwei Fei
Street of Shame

Interesting to watch Mizoguchi's development right after finishing Ozu and Shimizu's filmographies. Shimizu came from a very wealthy background, Ozu was middle class, and Mizoguchi proletarian. You can really see that in their work too. Mizoguchi's roots dating back to his shimpa and socialist tendency films from the 1920s.

I liked his silent The Water Magician (1933) and his first masterpiece The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) from his developmental period. Mizoguchi's voice, of course, is known for his depiction of women's suffering against the patriarchy of society, but these two films feature noble male leads which exalts the sacrifice of the women who love them. As you will see in the rest of this post, I found Mizoguchi's worst films tended to depict weak, passive, or flat, shallow male caricatures that were simply foils for his class and gender warfare polemics.

The war films were the war films, but-- I particularly disliked his version of The 47 Ronin. Not because he excluded any semblance of fighting or the climactic raid, which was well within his artistic license especially given the context of the political times, but because he transformed the last hour of this most hallowed tale of masculine redemption of honor into a minor subplot involving the romantic longings of a 19 year old girl. That gets the Mizoguchi eyeroll from me.

I was surprisingly disappointed with his immediate post war output. With the exception of the venereal Women of the Night (1948), which I didn't exactly like but concede it was effective (Mizoguchi far surpassed this anyway with his similar but far superior Street of Shame. I just hated watching his 1939-1951 films. At first I thought it was because the characters are so badly drawn, especially the men. Kinuyo Tanaka displays quite a bit of range portraying disparate two-dimensional heroines, but there's no depth to any of the writing. Just polemic, incredibly didactic films where the protagonists are helpless victims against the evils of society. Now I still think that, but since Mizoguchi's final late period started right after the end of the Allied Occupation, I can't help but notice that 1939-1951 period corresponds exactly with the censorship enforced on him, first by the Japanese themselves during the war, and then the Americans after the war.

Regardless, The Life of Oharu (1952) was terrific because right in the middle of the film Mizoguchi starts to shed all those trappings that I disliked so much. Mizoguchi's trademark style had been around since the conclusion of his developmental period at the end of the 1930s, but finally him and his screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda returned to personal, individual stories of well-drawn characters. Oharu earns her sympathy as a fully believable woman, yes a victim of the evils of men and society, but she also suffers from several self-inflicted wounds and personal indiscretions; and even when she sorts all that out, she just gets hit with plain bad luck. A truly memorable and tragic arc.

From that point forward was of course Mizoguchi's best work. Ugetsu (1953) the male characters have strong but misguided will. Sansho the Bailiff again all of the things that make Mizoguchi films wonderful, but the male lead has that same determined quality of character as Kikonosuke in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, making the tragic sacrifices of his mother and sister so much more powerful.

Chikamatsu Story (1954) I actually loathed this one as full of coincidences, plotholes, contrived melodrama, Mizoguchi giving into his worst impulses.

On the other hand, I rate Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955) higher than consensus. Solid, nothing groundbreaking here, you might even call it conservative within the bounds of what Mizoguchi was capable of, but that allowed for the performances to stand out. Machiko Kyo was wonderful. I didn't like Masayuki Mori's emperor that much, but for some reason I always find amusing joy with So Yamamura's supporting roles.

Mizoguchi's final film Street of Shame (1956) might actually be his best film. I can only compare with Tamizo Ishida's all-geisha house chamber drama Flowers Have Fallen (1938). Incredibly well-drawn characters and individual performances by Ayako Wakao, Machiko Kyo, Michiyo Kogure, and others, that made me sympathize with these successful and struggling prostitutes alike. The only thing that held me back from giving this a full 5-star rating was the conservative ending. Funny how I've always thought it was silly when Shakespeare plays ended with a dozen different people killing each other or committing suicide in the final moments, but one of the characters (if you've seen the movie, you know who) really should have died at the end ... there was a certain explosive element of tragedy missing in the conclusion, just my opinion.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#324 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:06 pm

Oh well, you slated my favorite (Chikamatsu Monogatari). :-( (For me, it's not even a close call between this and whatever might come next -- lots of candidates).

I have mixed feelings about his films between 1946 and 1951. I would say Victory of Women was easily his worst post-war film, because not only was the story dreadful, it was uncharacteristically visually dull throughout. Most of the other films during that period offered lots of visual beauty (and Portrait of Madame Yuki is an exquisitely beautiful film, regardless of whatever plot reservations I may have). Overall, I would not dismiss any of these out of hand -- other than VoW.

Street of Shame is wonderful for me mostly -- but my perceived major flaw seems different from your (it is the sub-plot about the older woman and her dreadful son -- conceptually fine, but seems worse-written and performed than the rest).

Yang Kwei Fei is mostly cherishable to me because of Machiko Kyo and the color photography. It doesn't seem like the colors are as good (or survived as well) for Taira Clan -- which I did like more on revisitation this year after starting the new (saublime) anime adaptation of Heike Monogatari.

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Re: Kenji Mizoguchi

#325 Post by FilmSnob » Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:31 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:06 pm
Oh well, you slated my favorite (Chikamatsu Monogatari). :-( (For me, it's not even a close call between this and whatever might come next -- lots of candidates).
What do you like about Chikamatsu Monogatari? I may give it a second watch, but the first try was easily my least favorite of his post-1951 films.

I'm adding on Kinuyo Tanaka's films (as a director) since I'm at the end of Mizoguchi now. Seems appropriate. I doubt there is a thread here, but The Eternal Breasts is highly acclaimed.

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