Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
by Kenji Mizoguchi
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Eitar? Ozawa, Ikio Sawamura, Kinuyo Tanaka, Machiko Ky?, Masayuki MoriDirector: Kenji Mizoguchi
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
Movie Reviews of Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Magnificent fable of desire and attachment
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I saw 'Ugetsu Monogatari' years ago, I wasn't so taken with it. I'm sure the overly soft, muddy VHS with barely translated and barely readable subtitles probably had a lot to do with my initial indifference. While the Criterion DVD shows some print damage at the reel beginnings and ends, it still looks great overall - and I can finally see what all the fuss over this film has been about. This is a very fine film, and an absolutely gorgeous one.
While the main protagonists are a pair of men, as ever with Mizoguchi, it's the suffering of the women that gives the film its heart and soul. The trials women in Japanese society have historically faced, as just about anyone familiar with the director's work knows, was his key theme. Seeing his film 'Life of Oharu' one could little guess that the Genroku-era book it is based on, Saikaku's 'Koshoku Ichidai Onna' (usually translated as 'The Life of an Amorous Woman') is actually a book full of wit and humor. Mizoguchi faithfully reproduces the episodes detailing Saikaku's heroine's downwardly-mobile path through life, but Saikaku's entertaining and wryly detached commentary on the mores of the day (in conflict with human nature), filtered through Mizoguchi's lens, stops just short of being a Stations of the Cross expanded to a life-story. (Ihara Saikaku, by the way, is an author I highly recommend - I have gobbled up every English translation of his work that I could lay my hands on, many, sadly, out of print.)
'Ugetsu' is nowhere near as melodramatic as that, or certain other of Mizoguchi's celebrated works. (My use of the term "melodrama" here is NOT an insult; melodrama, in Mizoguchi's hands, could attain an unmatched level of transcendent art - as anyone who has seen 'Sansho the Bailiff' can attest to.) This really does stand apart in nature from his other works, being a lyrical meditation on the ephemeral nature of the things that drive human beings, and the places our desires might lead us - skillfully marrying the naturalistic and the mystical in a compelling dual storyline that never becomes unbalanced or loses its grip.
I won't rehash the story of 'Ugetsu' - that's been done enough, and it's better just to SEE it, anyway. The real news is that Criterion has put together a stellar package for their release of this film. The three short interviews on disc one are far more substantial in terms of content than the usual. (I haven't listened to the, reportedly very good, commentary yet.) The booklet also provides real value, not so much in the essay, as in the literary sources it reproduces. Then there's the '75 documentary by Kaneto Shindo (who made the excellent 'Onibaba,' which is not to be missed, and the sadly unavailable 'Hadaka no Shima') on disc two. It's more weighted to the biographical than the technical side, and contains A LOT of information about Mizoguchi. The whole thing is beautifully packaged. As I said earlier, the source for the film itself shows some damage, but it's a safe bet that the elements are the best available, and the transfer is actually excellent. The outstanding, gauzy cinematography is crystal clear here. For the most part, the film looks absolutely great - and it is.
Summary of Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
Hailed by critics as one of the greatest films ever made, Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu is an undisputed masterpiece of Japanese cinema, revealing greater depths of meaning and emotion with each successive viewing. Mizoguchi's exquisite "gender tragedy" is set during Japan's violent 16th-century civil wars, a historical context well-suited to the director's compassionate perspective on the plight of women and the foibles of men. The story focuses on two brothers, Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Sakae Ozawa), whose dreams of glory (one as a wealthy potter, the other a would-be samurai) cause them to leave their wives for the promise of success in Kyoto. Both are led astray by their blind ambitions, and their wives suffer tragic fates in their absence, as Ugetsu evolves into a masterful mixture of brutal wartime realism and haunting ghost story. The way Mizoguchi weaves these elements so seamlessly together is what makes Ugetsu (masterfully derived from short stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant) so challenging and yet deeply rewarding as a timeless work of art. Featuring flawless performances by some of Japan's greatest actors (including Machiko Kyo, from Kurosawa's Rashomon), Ugetsu is essential viewing for any serious lover of film. --Jeff Shannon DVD features
The Criterion Collection's high standards of scholarly excellence are on full display in the two-disc set of Ugetsu, packaged in an elegant slipcase reflecting the tonal beauty of the film itself, which has been fully restored with a high-definition digital transfer. The well-prepared commentary by critic/filmmaker Tony Rayns combines the astute observations of a serious cineaste (emphasizing a keen appreciation for Mizoguchi's long-take style, compositional meaning, and literary inspirations) with informative biographical and historical detail. In the 14-minute featurette "Two Worlds Intertwined," director Masahiro Shinoda discusses how Mizoguchi's career and films have had a lasting impact on himself and Japanese culture in general. Interviews with Tokuzo Tanaka (first assistant director on Ugetsu) and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa focus more specifically on anecdotal production history Mizoguchi's working methods, including the director's legendary perfectionism regarding painstaking details of props, costumes, and production design.
Disc 2 consists entirely of Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a 150-minute documentary from 1975. Though it occasionally gets bogged down in biographical minutia, the film provides a thoroughly comprehensive survey of Mizoguchi's career, including interviews with nearly all of Mizoguchi's primary collaborators. Director/interviewer Kaneto Shindo ultimately arrives at an emotionally devastating coup de grace when he informs the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka (star of The Life of Oharu and other Mizoguchi classics) that Mizoguchi had considered her "the love of his life." Tanaka's graceful response provides a moving appreciation of their artistic bond, which never evolved into romance. As we learn, the tragic irony of Mizoguchi's life is that he died in sadness and suffering, in 1956, just as he was entering a more hopeful and artistically revitalized period of middle age. After showing us all the locations that were important in Mizoguchi's life, the film closes with a blunt discovery of life's ethereal nature: The great director's final home was torn down and replaced with a gas station. The 72-page booklet that accompanies Ugestu contains a well-written appreciation of the film by critic Phillip Lopate. Also included are the three short stories that inspired Ugetsu, allowing readers to see how Mizoguchi and screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda masterfully combined elements of these unrelated stories to create one of the enduring classics of Japanese cinema. --Jeff Shannon
The great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi's crowning achievement, set in sixteenth-century Japan, a period of bloody civil war, and focusing on an ambitious potter haunted by a beautiful ghost and a farmer who dreams of becoming a samurai. A classic com
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