PRINCESS YANG KWEIFEI Movie Review

Yokihi
The Empress Yang Kwei Fei

Set in 8th-century China, Kenji Mizoguchi's elegant film is based on the life of the last T'ang emperor and the beautiful servant girl he loves and makes his bride. She falls victim to court jealousies and he to his greedy family, though even death cannot end their love (which we see in a staggering final sequence that rivals anything in Mizoguchi). Princess Yang Kwei Fei is a mystical and miraculous combination of fairy tale and ghost story, saturated throughout with a graceful supernatural aura. Mizoguchi's gently moving camera and richly evocative color scheme combine to make this one of the most memorably touching and delicately haunting of the great director's masterworks. With Machiko Kyo and Masayuki Mori, both of whom were in Kurosawa's Rashomon as well as Mizoguchi's great erotic ghost story, Ugetsu.

NEXT STOP … Life of Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, Ugetsu

1955 91m/C JP Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Sakae Ozawa, So Yamamura; D: Kenji Mizoguchi. VHS NYF