The Life of Oharu

A woman in waiting (Kinuyo Tanaka) of modest respectability falls to woeful and pitiable levels after partaking in a relationship with a commoner (Toshiro Mifune). Cast out from her village, she soon finds herself bearing a son to powerful lord she is forbidden to see, widowed on another occasion, and sold into a life of prostitution by her father. Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu is bleak and sorrowful, somewhat labored, shot in beautiful black and white, and made with precise craft. Tanaka is heartbreaking as the doomed and innocent Oharu.

*** out of ****

Sansho the Bailiff

Journeying to reunite with their noble patriarch, a lord exiled for many years for an unpopular decision that would have benefited his subjects, a mother is duped, captured, separated from her son and daughter, sold as a slave to a brothel while her children are beholden to the sadistic warden of the title while they dream of rejoining. Kenji Mizoguchi Sansho the Bailiff, from a short story by Mori Ogai, is a mournful dirge shot in stark, spectacular cinematography.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Ugetsu

Two men venture into the city seeking wealth and glory while neglecting their wives, leaving them to terrible fates. From short stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Mapassant, Kenjji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu presents simple, tragic moral fables in a stark, ethereal, and poetic manner. Sakae Ozawa is outsanding as the potter.

*** 1/2 out of ****