Top 5 (or rating) Mizoguchi

There doesn’t seem to be a lot on Mizo here so this may be a way of stoking up more interest. Your top 5, please, or if you’ve not seen enough to choose from, then perhaps rate each film seen out of 10.

i’ll be quite tough in my scoring to differentiate

Top 5
Sansho the Bailiff 10
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums 9.5
Tales of the Taira Clan 9.5
The Life of Oharu 9.5
Ugetsu Monogatari 9.25
+
Miss Oyu 9.25
Osaka Elegy 9
The Loyal 47 Ronin 9
A Geisha 8.75
Lady of Musashino 8.5
The Water Magician 8.5
Chikamatsu Monogatari 8.5
Sisters of the Gion 8.25
The Woman of Rumour 8.25
Street of Shame 8.25
Women of the Night 8
Five Women around Utamaro 7.75
Yang Kwei Fei 7.,75
Tokyo March 6.5

Straits of Love and Hate, My Love has been Burning and The Love of Sumako the Actress are the ones topping my must-see list. Such a pity most of his films are lost, and it sounds like A Woman of Osaka (1940) may be the most tragic missing masterpiece

I mostly agree with your picks, though i’d substitute Sisters of the Gion or Chikamatsu Monogatari for Tales of the Taira Clan. Trying to pick my top five Mizoguchis, though, is like picking my five favorite fingers. I saw Life of Oharu for the first time in high school (20 + years ago) on a crappy videotape and have been in love ever since…

Ah that’s great, and glad to have someone else here interested in Mizo. Oharu is one that’s grown on me with each viewing. I know Tales of the Taira Clan isn’t usually ranked among his elite, though critic John Gillett did once call it the best of all films, and it hits the right spots withe me- for its jewel-like colours, costumes, historical colour, its credible and deft handling of the issue of identity confusion (it puts say Secrets and Lies to shame), its lovely little romance, its upbeat sense of destiny (though anyone familiar with Japanese history or who’s seen Kwaidan will see an irony in the final scene), and a few superb scenes such as the monks’ torchlit forest procression that struck me as somehow familiar, though whether from a dream i’m not sure. Chikamatsu was Kurosawa’s favourite by Mizo; i saw that in Cardiff when there was a very successful, (at the NFT in London record-breaking) Mizo season in 1998 for the centenary of his birth. of course it’s excellent, some of the outdoor scenes are especially beautiful and memorable but there were a few moments when a hysterical melodramatic edge grated a little and the performance of male lead Hasegawa didn’t really suit me- well, he really wasn’t quite good enough for my beloved Kyoko Kagawa, but then who is?

I’ve only viewed four Mizoguchi. A Woman of Rumor is in my opinion his best film.

A Woman of Rumor
Ugetsu
The Crucified Lovers
Sansho the Bailiff

I’ve only viewed four Mizoguchi. A Woman of Rumor is in my opinion his best film.

A Woman of Rumor
Ugetsu
The Crucified Lovers
Sansho the Bailiff

the masterpieces:

1. Sansho The Bailiff
2. Ugetsu Monogatari
3. Story of the Late Chrysanthemums

the great films:

4. Osaka Elegy
5. Sisters of the Gion
6. Chikamatsu Monogatari
7. Gion Bayashi
8. The Life of Oharu

good (I like but not that much)

9. Miss Oyu
10. Streets of Shame
11. Woman of the Night

ah i can understand your groupings Genaro- your top 3, along with Oharu, were all in the top 100 in the last Sight and Sound Critics’ poll. Miss Oyu is a small film but i think it’s lovely; like Taira Clan it appeals to me more than most. The ending reminded me of a scene in Sunrise (though of course Sunrise is much greater). I’ve probably underrated Sisters of the Gion; i’ve only seen it once, my video of it is kaputt. Good to have your input and appreciation

Genaro, a curio: to my mind Streets of Shame is almost his Masterpiece! What didn’t you like about it?
(Instead I agree with the other two titles you put in the third group).

I can’t disagree with your top five, would only move your last, Ugetsu Monogatari, to first — because this is the most beautiful film I know.

Dan, i don’t know about Genaro, but Street of Shame struck me as much rougher round the edges than i’d expected compared with the refined beauty of Sansho i’d come to love. But second time round- and this was the same with The Woman of Rumour- i could appreciate it more on its own terms. What a brilliant scene where Machiko Kyo is lambasting her hypocritical dad, and what an extraordinary shot to end a great career on. The music in the film is very strange, almost like some cheap sci-fi flying saucers type film. Women of the Night has a similar toughness, with moments of hysteria (which may be off-putting to some, i’m in 2 minds), Tadao Sato rates it among Mizo’s very best.

The holy trinity in Paris: Yoda, Tanaka, Mizoguchi, in 1953

To flesh out this thread a bit, here’s a very basic intro from years back

Mizoguchi Kenji was born in Tokyo in 1898, the middle child in a family of modest means. The abrupt ending of the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war, dashing his father’s attempts to sell raincoats to the army, precipitated a desperate financial crisis which forced his older sister Suzu to be given up for adoption then sold to a geisha house. Though she was fortunately “rescued” and later married by a wealthy patron, the event, along with the death when he was 17 of the mother he idolised, had a huge impact on Mizoguchi’s life and future career as a director- a principal theme of his films being the oppression and suffering of women.

Having left school at 13 for a pharmacy apprenticeship, Mizoguchi was found work designing kimonos and began to study art and western painting, before in turn becoming a newspaper illustrator at Kobe. In 1922, after a period of unemployment and rather inconsiderate dependence on Suzu (despite his films’ feminist credentials, he was often self-centred in his relationships with women, including his regular actress Tanaka Kinuyo), he was hired as an actor, then as assistant director, at the Nikkatsu company. The next year, he directed the first of over eighty films, the majority of which, from the 1920’s and 30’s, are now lost.

Long established, through pre-war masterpieces such as “Sisters of the Gion”, “Osaka Elegy” (both 1936) and the dazzling spatial exploration “Story of the Late Chrysanthemums” (1939), as Japan’s leading director along with Ozu, Mizoguchi’s films first found international acclaim in 1952. Following on from the huge unexpected success of Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” at Venice the previous year, “The Life of Oharu”, a harrowing but typically beautiful film concerning a court lady’s downfall to ageing prostitute, was awarded the festival’s international prize, a feat matched by Silver Lions for his next two entries.

From “Oharu” onwards, his career and enthusiasm now revitalised, Mizoguchi achieved in the space of just four years an unequalled succession of sublime masterpieces, including “Ugetsu Monogatari” (1953), “Sansho the Bailiff”, “Chikamatsu Monogatari” (both 1954), “Yang Kwei Fei” and “Tales of the Taira Clan” (both 1955). The last two, with their shimmering jewel-like costumes, are remarkable ventures into colour.

By the time of his early death from leukemia in 1956, Mizoguchi’s films were widely revered, in particular by young French critics like Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard, for their superlative mise-en-scene; lovely painterly compositions, elegant long takes and serene, fluid camerawork (most notably that of Miyagawa Kazuo) projecting a political stance- albeit often within “jidai-geki” period dramas- on behalf of downtrodden women.

While the disdainfully imperious Samurai epic “The Loyal 47 Ronin” (1941), the neglected little gem “Miss Oyu” (with unlikely moment of ticklish humour) and the gorgeously vivid “Tales of the Taira Clan” are all sorely underrated, the ghostly drama “Ugetsu”, an engrossing admonition against vain male ambition and erotic temptation- replete with rapturous idyll at the mansion of eerie Lady Wakasa- is perhaps still his most renowned work.

Yet Mizoguchi’s qualities and themes are fused at an exquisite, poignant peak in “Sansho the Bailiff”, whose refined yet detailed narrative concerns the cruel misfortune befalling an exiled feudal governor’s wife and children. Here, the director’s ideal of self-sacrificing womanhood, as represented by his mother and sister, is clearly apparent in the characters of Anju and Tamaki.

Within a contemplative Zen-like frame of delicately nuanced lighting and lyrical, translucent silvery cinematography, water and ravishing landscapes are imbued with a sense of aching longing and overwhelming emotional resonance. In one scene, a few ripples are charged with fathomless depths of feeling. The immensely touching ending, its final crane and panning shots a model of unobtrusive technique, is rightly famed for conveying a universe beyond the confines of its story.

In “Sansho the Bailiff”, the director’s demanding perfectionism- he would repeatedly return the scripts of loyal screenwriter Yoda Yoshikata with the words “no good”- reaps its richest rewards. Though Mizoguchi is still to receive due recognition in Britain and America, it was voted (along with Chrysanthemums, Ugetsu and Oharu), among the top 100 in Sight and Sound’s latest poll of international critics. It is, alone, enough to mark him as one of the very greatest masters and justify his proclaimed status as “the Shakespeare” of cinema.

Ugetsu Monogatari
Sansho The Bailiff
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
Chikamatsu Monogatori
Life of Oharu

Uwasa No Onna
Empress Yang Kwei Fei
Tales of the Taira Clan
The Water Magician
47 Ronin
Miss Oyu
Sisters of the Gion
Gion Bayashi
Lady of Musashino
Osaka Elegy
Street of Shame
Miyamoto Musashi
Woomen of the Night
Tokyo March

The only Japanese moving image shown in Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema was a shot of Chikamatsu Monogatori (Crucified Lovers).

ah, we’ve seen virtually the same films, except i’ve not managed to see Miyamoto Musashi yet (it’s apparently among the weaker ones, as your rating supports); as you know, it’s not easy getting hold of some of these, so you’ve gone out of your way, great to have another admirer here. The silent pokyo March was a big hit in Japan but seems relatively tame (still worthwhile though) and not typical of his later mastery. Godard was a big fan of Mizo, but surprising he had so little time for Japan in Histoires du Cinéma- which i’ve not seen in full, but i did notice the absence.

Godard had a still shot of Ozu in there as well, but is a paltry return for the glories of Japanese cinema.

The problem with Tokyo march is that it’s incomplete because lost!

i was just looking for a Rivette quote for another thread where Celine and Julie go Boating is compared with Ugetsu, then thought why not go the whole hog and give old Mizo a proper boost.

“The eye of a painter and the soul of a poet” (Macmillan Encyclopedia)- see how this compares with Orson Welles’ quote on his page here

“The Japanese director i admire the most” (Akira Kurosawa)

“Now that Mizoguchi is gone, there are very few directors who can see the past clearly and realistically” (Akira Kurosawa)

“You can compare only what is comparable and that which aims high enough. Mizoguchi, alone, imposes a feeling of a unique world and language, is answerable only to himself…” (Jacques Rivette)

“To prefer Kurosawa to Mizoguchi is to be totally blind, but to love Mizoguchi alone and not Kurosawa is to have only one eye.” (André Bazin)

“One of cinema’s very greatest masters” (Geoff Andrew, Directors A-Z)

“For some he became the supreme filmmaker, the cinematic Shakespeare, realising to its fullest the potential of film as an art form” (Robin Wood)

“The greatest movie i have ever seen” (Robin Wood on Sansho the Bailiff)

“No praise is too high for him” (Orson Welles)

“In Mizoguchi’s cinema, everything is beautiful: the landscapes are breathtaking; the faces are photogenically eloquent; the camera movements are fluid and complex; the black and white (more precisely, black and silver) cinematography is subtle and dense of texture; the compositions are so precise it’s as if space itself were being cut along a dotted line… One of the greatest practitioners of pure mise-en-scene the cinema has ever known and the master of the heroically sustained long take.” (Gilbert Adair)

“This Mizoguchi fellow was really something special” (1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

“A director for all seasons, whom Kurosawa, much better known in the West, freely acknowledged was his master. I cannot tell you how important Mizoguchi was to my film-going experience. He made me realise what the art of cinema could achieve. And his films will live with vibrant life for as long as anyone watches other than Hollywood movies.” (Derek Malcolm, A Century of Films)

One of the “exalted figures who soar above the earth… such an artist can convey the lines of the poetic design of being. He is capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life” (Andrei Tarkovsky)

“One of the director’s most awesome achievements” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide, on Sansho the Bailiff)

“An emotional impact that has seldom been equalled” (Bloomsbury Foreign film Guide on Ugetsu Monogatari)

“He has no superior at the unfolding of narrative by way of camera movement and he was a great director of actresses… he is supreme in the realisation of internal states in external views” (David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film)"

“Mizoguchi’s cinema is dynamic and obsessively fluid: his tracking and crane shots have a naturalism that one rarely encounters elsewhere… Form and content are indivisible” (Adrian Turner, quoted in John Kobal’s Top 100 Movies)

" He loads the air with sumptuousness. Every image adds to the richness. His flowing camera continually finds unexpected levels and perspectives." (Eric Rhode, A History of the Cinema)

“His absolute mastery of decor, the long take, and the moving camera make Mizoguchi one of the great mise-en-scene directors of the international cinema” (David Cook, A History of Narrative Film)

“He omits a note so pure that the slightest variation becomes expressive” (Philippe Demonsablon)

“Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to the theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest” (Jean Douchet)

“With Mizoguchi, form and idea, atmosphere and feeling are indivisible… his films are assembled out of images of breathtaking exactness…a world which irresistibly captures and enfolds the spectator” (David Robinson, The Times)

“What he conserves becomes in his hands an inexhaustible resource. …Let every young filmmaker take any late Mizoguchi film and watch… we could do worse than to treat this oeuvre as an Academy for the Study of Staging” (David Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light, 2005)

“The master among masters in the Japanese film world…to talk about this man is at the same time to talk about the path upon which the Japanese film has progressed” (Tadao Sato)

“The three-clawed fiend” (faithful scriptwriter Yoshikata Yoda)

“This man they call Mizoguchi is an idiot” (Mizoguchi himself)

I saw 16 movies directed by Mizo:

1) Ugetsu Monogatari (which is the greatest Japanese movie ever made, imho)
2) Sanshô dayû
3) Chikamatsu monogatari
4) Yôkihi
5) Taki no shiraito

Other masterpieces: Utamaro o Meguru Gonin no Onna, Zangiku monogatari.

Good to see love for Taki no Shiraito, The Water Magician, i was quite hard on it in my rating, as the court scene, well, it all stretched credibility, but then it was a melodrama and the film as a whole is marvellous.

“This man they call Mizoguchi is an idiot” (Mizoguchi himself)

Love it. Have you any other quotes stated by directors?

Erm, i don’t have any to hand. Anyway, trouble with Mizoguchi he often acted like a tyrant and as if others were idiots- hence Yoda’s quote and his nickname the demon! But to be fair, sensitively, kindly and honourably on other occasions; he was complex and full of contradictions.

But, most of all,
he was
the genius.

It’s been mentioned elsewhere that not many films by Mizoguchi are seen here and generally in film circles, so i’m bumping this up to spur extra attention.

I’m glad for the thread, I’ve only watch (wonderful) Sansho the Bailiff so far, and it’s good to know where to continue from. Thanks a lot! :)

I have only watched all US releases plus Crucified Lovers which I saw on cinema. I am desperate to see Story of the Late Chrysanthemum and Life of Oharu. My favorite ones are

The Crucified Lovers
Sansho the Baillif
Ugetsu Monogatari

I also saw Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion, Women of the Night, and Street of Shame which was a bit of a disappointment. I enjoyed them but I sincerely think that they do not belong in the same league as the first three. Maybe it was a classical case of having set expectations to high… I think that, for instance, When a Woman ascends the stairs deals with the same themes in a rather superior way.

My Top 5:
1. A Geisha
2. Street of Shame
3. Sansho the Bailiff
4. Ugetsu
5. Osaka Elegy

Though I’ve seen a lot of his films, I haven’t had a chance to see Taira Clan, Chrysanthemums, or Oharu. Given the popularity of those among everyone else, I’d say my list is far from definitive…

Story of the Late Chrysanthemums is now on youtube but the image isn’t great, i’m not sure it can do the film justice, especially as Mizo wasn’t one for close-ups, especially at that time. Come to think of it i heard not long ago of someone working on a dvd release in the near future, so maybe worth waiting to see it properly. Oharu is on dvd in the UK, it was released along with the lesser known Lady Musashino. Taira Clan was a BFI video but it may be hard to get hold of now.

Andre, well i agree the ones on the Criterion Eclipse fallen women set aren’t among his best, not the ideal introduction as likely to be a bit disappointing with raised expectations, but they do have their fans. In his book written in the 80s, the great critic Tadao Sato rated Women of the Night as good as anything by Mizo, but that’s a rare judgment and since then in polls he chose others, like Sansho, in his overall top 10. Naruse: for me, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs was a disappointment compared with Sound of the Mountain, Floating Clouds especially, also Repast. Mizo didn’t rate him at all, but had a lot of respect for Ozu. Naruse’s less melodramatic and intense than Mizo of course and superb with actors, subtle strengths. Very different temperaments and ways of working, neither easy to work for. Naruse didn’t usually like wide location shooting, more restricted. Unlike Kurosawa, he was not one for awkward weather either. I digress, but anyway Japanese cinema has something for everyone…

1. sansho the bailiff
2. life of oharu
3. ugestu monogatari
4. street of shame
5. women of the night

there’s still so many to see, i wish they were more readily available. eclipse should do a japanese masters set, a rare film from kurosawa, teshigahara, mizo, kobayashi, and ozu or something like that.

On the other hand, Ozu had a great deal of respect for Naruse. They started working at the same studio and Ozu always thought him to be terrible neglected. Unfortunately I have only seen another Naruse movie Husband and Wife but I would love to see more.

1. The 47 Ronin (1941) 100
2. Princess Yang Kwei-fei (1955) 100
3. The Life of Oharu (1952) 99
4. Ugetsu (1953) 98
5. Sansho the Bailiff (1954) 98