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Wednesday, September 1, 2021

CHIKAMATSU MONOGATARI / A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU (1954)

Seeing a film by Japan’s Kenji Mizoguchi, a bit like going to The Frick Museum in Manhattan, nothing but masterpieces.  This, from his nonpareil late works, if less well known than LIFE OF OHARU/’52; UGETSU/’53; STREET OF SHAME/’56, is equally exceptional, a period piece from an 18th century play with an unusually elaborate interlocking plot and a melodramatic tilt to its conflicts and suspense.  That’s literally melodramatic, with telling use of rhythmic underscoring at moments of stress & violence; and staged with half an eye toward Bunraku (puppet) techniques.  The twisty story involves a master printer whose attempt to help a servant girl raise cash for her ne’er-do-well brother escalates into a near noirish no-good-deed-goes-unpunished tragedy.  Money stolen from the lordly scroll master; attempted sexual blackmail (and a failed attempt at a reverse); misread adulterous sightings; a doomed dash to freedom; accidental love matches; all derailed by the formal demands of honor & justice in Feudal Japan court society.  By the end, the good, the bad and the ugly all punished without justice or mercy.  And if this closed society feels foreign to us, the swift movement in action & plot, paradoxically makes this one of Mizoguchi most readily relatable films for anyone unfamiliar with Mizoguchi or classic Japanese cinema.

DOUBLE-BILL: The earliest available Mizoguchi, OSAKA ELEGY/’36, is imperfectly preserved, but don’t let that stop you.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/naniwa-ereji-osaka-elegy-1936.html

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