UGETSU Movie Review

Ugetsu Monogatari

In 16th-century Japan, two peasant brothers-in-law, both ambitious in different ways, set out for the city to better themselves. One of the two. Tobei (Sakas Ozawa), who dreams of military glory, encounters catastrophe when he comes across samurai armor and claims another man's victory as his own. The other man, Genjuro (Masayuki Mori), meets and is seduced by the mysterious and overwhelmingly sensuous Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo of Rashomon). Genjuro's enchantment is so great that he abandons his wife and child for her, before realizing that the Lady Wakasa is actually the ghost of a girl who died before experiencing the joy of womanhood. Kenji Mizoguchi's great, intoxicating Ugetsu is drawn from stories by Akinari Ueda, but the haunting images of Mizoguchi's film make it impossible to imagine these tales in any other form. One of the few films to ever convincingly give photographic life to mystical experience, Ugetsu is also typical of Mizoguchi's concern with women's frustrations and their oppressed role in Japanese society. Ugetsu is filled with unforgettable moments and images such as the morning of ecstasy that follows the first sexual encounter between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa. Simultaneously realistic and otherworldly, this is one of the cinema's great fables about the human toll taken by worldly ambition, and the single greatest ghost story ever filmed. The full title, Ugetsu Monogatari, is translated as Tales of the Pale and Silver Moon After the Rain. Silver Lion Award, Venice Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Sansho the Bailiff, Princess Yang Kwei Fei, Kwaidan

1953 96m/B JP Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Kinuyo Tanaka, Sakae Ozawa; D: Kenji Mizoguchi; W: Yoshikata Yoda; C: Kazuo Miyagawa; M: Fumio Hayasaka. Venice Film Festival ‘53: Silver Prize; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘55: Best Costume Design (B & W). VHS, LV, 8mm HMV, WFV, DVT