LIFE OF OHARU Movie Review

Diary of Oharu
Saikaku Ichidai Onna

In 17th-century Japan, a prostitute (Kinuyo Tanaka) describes via flashbacks the long and terrible journey that has taken her from being the young, beautiful, sought-after daughter of a samurai, to the bottom rung of society on which she now exists. Kenji Mizoguchi's magnificent Life of Oharu was based on a novel by Ibara Saikaku that the director waited for many years to film, so that—by his own account—he could grow emotionally closer to the material through careful reflection. Oharu's downfall is the result of a social system that extracts a terrible and irreparable price for indiscretions that are the result of normal human emotions; that price is, as Mizoguchi demonstrated in so many of his films, considerably higher for that society's women. Each step in her descent is seen as both tragic and inevitable, and is depicted with the stately grace and sheer narrative skill of a master storyteller. Mizoguchi's restless camera travels with Oharu on her journey, and the film's elegant forward motion suggests the passage of a single human life through the course of history. Whether or not it is, as some critics have stated, one of the cinema's few great feminist works, Life of Oharu is unquestionably one of the most powerful screen portraits of a woman objectified—treated as a thing, with a physical value that declines with her social position. Mizoguchi's masterwork is an unforgettable portrait of one woman's quest to at least find redemption in a world that systematically denies her justice. The large cast includes Toshiro Mifune. Silver Lion, 1952 Venice Film Festival. (Cut by 30 minutes for export, the complete, 146-minute version has recently been beautifully restored for American release.)

NEXT STOP … Sansho the Bailiff, Harakiri, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

1952 136m/B JP Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune; D: Kenji Mizoguchi. VHS HMV, TPV