Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) Tails Of Rain And Moon (Criterion Dual-audio Remaster + DVD Extras)

With audio commentary by filmmaker, critic, and festival programmer Tony Rayns.
Known to American audiences simply as Ugetsu, this was the film which introduced Mizoguchi to the West. During the civil wars of the 16th century, a potter desperately trying to continue his craft in a war-torn village meets a phantom princess and is lured away to a land of sensual delights. Meanwhile his neighbor, dreaming of military glory, achieves a general's rank for his fraudulent exploits. Eventually, both men are brought down to earth, and they return home to spend the rest of their lives in the fields. But for the women of the tale the lesson has been even more bitter: the potter's wife is murdered by bandits, the samurai's is reduced to prostitution; even the ghost princess, Lady Wakasa, is destroyed by male betrayal. Phantoms and ghosts are evoked in imagic scenes, and fantasy and reality are inseparable, making Mizoguchi's stylistically superb film a powerful study in psychology and an intense tragedy.


Ugetsu is evocative of the Buddhist universe of Noh drama, where time is a movement of consciousness, memory is as tangible as the present, and the dead return to voice their grief or longing. Blending a tale of karmic law, a ghost story, and a love story, Mizoguchi also refers to other Japanese art forms such as narrative picture scrolls in his use of perspective and his signature long takes that move us seamlessly from one scene to the next. For, just as his images overflow with life-characters forever running off toward more life outside the frame—so this reality flows into the phantom universe as well. He builds the otherworld entirely out of what he is given in this one: shadows and lighting, decor and texture, and the graceful chicanery of desire.


Displaying all of the hallmarks of Kenji Mizoguchi's quietly affecting style, this landmark film has been one of the most highly praised Japanese movies, garnering the admiration of such directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, as well as a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. Mizoguchi's fluid camerawork expands this otherworldly tragedy into a profound meditation on the transience of human life. In one of the film's most noted scenes, Genjuro relaxes in a hot spring as his beautiful spirit-lover disrobes. The camera coyly pans away, tilts downwards, and tracks along the ground. The barren ripples of ground dissolve to a Zen rock garden; then the camera tilts up to reveal the couple picnicking at a lakeside park. In this one elegant device, Mizoguchi evokes not only the passage of time but also emptiness and impermanence, as he passes the viewer through an unpeopled space. His signature lyricism frames unfolding human dramas as one small part of life's immutable ebb and flow. A brilliant summation of Mizoguchi's motifs and visual poetry, Ugetsu Monogatari remains one of the masterpieces of world cinema.


In the provincial village of Ohmi, in the era of the Countries in feudal war, Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) leaves his wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and son in order to undertake a dangerous trip to the city where he can profit from the widespread shortage by selling his pottery. He is accompanied by his well intentioned brother, Tobei (Eitaro Ozawa), a peasant farmer who dreams of providing a better life for his wife Ohama (Mitsuko Mito) by becoming a samurai. Encouraged by their successful venture, the brothers return with loftier ambitions that quickly turn to greed. During the evening of the kiln firing, the village is attacked, and the two families are forced to abandon their homes, traveling by boat to the city of Omizo, where they can sell the undamaged pottery.


Along the way, they encounter a lone, wounded boatman, who warns them of pirate ships in the vicinity, and Genjuro decides to leave Miyagi and their son behind for their safety. While selling pottery at the open market square, an enigmatic young woman named Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo) approaches Genjuro and orders several articles for delivery to the Kutsuki mansion, and immediately captivates him. Tobei seizes the momentary distraction to run away with their profits and purchase a samurai outfit, attempting to join the army of a local feudal lord. The abandoned Ohama, in a vain attempt to find her husband, encounters a band of pillaging mercenaries, and is violated.


Ugetsu Monogatari is an exquisitely realized, serenely composed allegorical film on love, greed, and betrayal. Kenji Mizoguchi's seamless fusion of poetic realism and surreal mysticism creates a rarefied atmosphere that is paradoxically beautiful and austere, redemptive and tragic, symbolizing Genjuro's coexistence between the physical and supernatural realm - a reflection of the duality of the human soul. Chronologically, the protracted feudal war surrounds every villager with the pervasive specter of death. Episodically, Mizoguchi uses an overhead shot of a woman dressed in a soft, fluttering white kimono to introduce us to the transcendental Lady Wakasa. Genjuro passes through a series of open and screened spaces at the Kutsuki mansion, creating a visual dichotomy of physical reality and ethereal shadows, before his formal introduction to Lady Wakasa. Inevitably, the tortured Genjuro is forced to confront his beguiling temptress - a metaphor for the dark passion of the soul - and returns to his fractured, haunted past: a diligent, simple potter, inspired by the love of his devoted wife.


Thanks to CerealRipper for the original 2x DVD9. Please visit his post for scans.