Ugetsu monogatari (1953) - film review

In 16th Century Japan, Genjurô and Tôbei are peasant farmers who live on the shore of Lake Biwa with their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.   The two men supplement their meagre income by making clay pots, which they sell at the market in the town of Nagahama.   This being a time of war, the pots fetch a good price, and Genjurô returns to his wife triumphant with his earnings.  Seeing that they have a lucrative sideline, the two men devote all their efforts into making more pots, ignoring Miyagi’s appeals to put family before wealth.  After an attack on their village by roaming soldiers, Genjurô and Tôbei decide to head for Nagahama to sell their pottery, accompanied by their wives and Genjurô’s young son, Genichi.  To avoid marauding soldiers and outlaws, they decide to make the journey by boat.  When they encounter another boat occupied by a dying man, Miyagi insists on staying behind with her son.   Having reached Nagahama safely, Genjurô and Tôbei do good business selling their wares.   Once he has his share of the earnings, Tôbei abandons his wife and buys a suit of armour to that he can fulfil his life’s ambition, to become a samurai.   Meanwhile, Genjurô is visited by a beautiful young noblewoman, who requests that he deliver several of his pots  to her house, Kitsuki Manor.  At the house, Lady Wakasa tells Genjurô her sad story, that she and her servant are the sole survivors of a raid by soldiers.  The spirit of her dead father haunts the house and persuades her that she must marry Genjurô...

Kenji Mizoguchi was already a veteran of Japanese cinema by the time he was discovered by western audiences in the early 1950s.  Akira Kurosawa may have awakened the West’s interest in Japanese cinema with his film Rashomon (1950), but he was the new kid on the block compared with Mizoguchi, whose filmmaking credits stretched back as far as 1923.  The Life of Oharu (1952) and Ugetsu monogatari were the films that brought Mizoguchi to the attention of a western audience, but these were late flourishings in a career that was already extraordinary by any standards.

Ugetsu monogatari, whose title translates literally as Tales of the Rain and Moon, was inspired by the short stories of the renowned 18th Century Japanese writer Ueda Akinari.  Whilst many of his contemporaries were having success making social realist films which a modern Japanese audience could easily relate to, Mizoguchi was still wedded to the traditions of the past, and a style of filmmaking that was beginning to look outdated.  What makes Ugetsu monogatari such a unique piece of cinematic art, its haunting lyrical beauty and seamless fusion of reality and fantasy, made it virtually irrelevant to a Japan that was still traumatised by the experience of war and its aftermath.  Mizoguchi may have struggled to find an appreciative audience for the film at home, but it was critically acclaimed in the West and secured his international reputation.

Ugetsu monogatari is a film which typifies both Mizoguchi’s technique and his preoccupation with women as victims in a male-dominated world.  Stylistically, the most striking aspect of this film is its fluidity.  Scenes melt into one another, as though in a dream, often without us being aware of the fact.  This is accomplished through Mizoguchi’s most ingenious device, the invisible dissolve through a slow tracking shot.  Mizoguchi uses this device to remarkable effect, blurring the distinction between what is real and what is not, and lending an unsettling otherworldly aura to the entire film.  Perhaps the best example of this is the sequence near the end of the film in which Genjurô returns to his homestead to find it totally deserted.  The camera follows him as he leaves his home by one door and re-enters by another, but when he returns his wife and child have magically appeared from nowhere.  Without a camera edit to break the flow, the spectator experiences what Genjurô experiences, a seamless transition from the real world into that of the imagination.

Mizoguchi’s cinema is often likened to Japanese art in its simple but highly alluring use of the visual form.  There are several scenes in Ugetsu monogatari that have an indefinable yet profound beauty, such as the one in which the Lady Wakasa and her servant are seen walking through a field of tall reeds, like lost souls in a limbo world.  The sequence on the mist-shrouded lake is just as eye-catching, suffused with an eerie Cocteau-esque poetry that suggests supernatural forces are about to come into play.  The stylisation of the Kitsuki Manor scenes clearly shows the influence of Noh Theatre, not just in the minimalist set design, but also in the slightly exaggerated performances, a subtle hint to the spectator that seeing is not necessarily believing.

The most consistent theme in Mizoguchi’s cinema is the depiction of women as victims of male folly.  Ugetsu monogatari is possibly the best illustration of this, since it shows us two women who, despite their best efforts, end up being destroyed, either physically or spiritually, by their husband’s greed and ambition.  Women traditionally had a raw deal in Japanese society, their role being little more than to give birth and act as a willing plaything for men.  In this film, they are portrayed in a more independently minded, almost heroic light, as selfless homebuilders, in contrast to men, who are shown to be both egocentric and foolish, prey to mad impulses which rarely achieve any good.  It would be stretching it to say that this a pro-feminist film, but it is certainly unusual for its time in its depiction of women as the wiser and nobler sex.

Widely considered the pinacle of Mizoguchi’s achievements, Ugetsu monogatari now ranks as a landmark in world cinema.   The film’s artistic merits are better appreciated today that when the film was first seen.  In 1953, it was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival; the jury did not feel it merited a higher accolade than this.  In fact the Golden Lion was withheld that year since no film was deemed sufficiently worthy to receive this award.  The film also garnered an Oscar nomination for its costume design, but did not win the award.  Ultimately, the only honour that matters is the status accorded by time, and Ugetsu monogatari scores extremely highly in this regard.  With its sublime visual poetry and stark humanity, this has to be one of the most beguiling of all films.

© James Travers 2010

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