Year: 1953
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Kenji Mizoguchi began his film career in the silent era (with 1923's Ai Ni Yomigaeru Hi) and made a staggering number of films for Japanese Cinema until his greatest work of art; the lyrical, poetic and haunting Ugetsu. This, like Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, greatly boosted the interest of Japanese Cinema onto an International Audience. Kenji Mizoguchi, who died shortly after in 1956, saw his films rise to a prominence then unheard of in Japan.
Family man farmer and craftsman Genjurô travels to Nagahama to sell his wares and intends to make a small fortune. His neighbor Tobei that is a fool man dreams on becoming a samurai. Together their greed and ambition blind them.
Mizoguchi's Ugetsu came about during a great time; the West was having a booming economic post-war period and they had an unquenchable thirst for the more exotic and "traditional" Japan. He did not make Ugetsu to appeal purely to the United States however; his engagement with the past was not to drum up nostalgia about better times, but rather do the opposite and expose war for the horror that it truley is.
Mizoguchi blends the realistic and the macabre in an almost seamless fashion by varying the direction between documentary-like views of destruction and bizarre set pieces (such as the phantom boat). Bolerolike music underscores the eerie feelings of dread and chaos that we feel throughout the film. Even scenes of love have an undercurrent of madness wading beneath them.
Ugetsu is a remarkable "they don't make these anymore!" picture that transends entertainment to create a beautiful work of art. Its as close as one can get to a visual representation of poetry. A memorable experience that trumps every other "ghost" story made before and after.
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