La cigogne de papier

The story was a bit melodramatic, and kind of fluffy and sticky (yes, at the same time) for a modern audience (maybe 5/10), but some of the visuals and camera stuff are very gorgeous and beautiful (like 10/10). It'd be cool to just edit all those shots together with some nice traditional Japanese music or make some really great enka karaoke videos out of them. Standard Mizoguchi story stuff with the anti- prostitution/ downtrodden woman subject matter, but done much better in his bigger classics. For the right atmosphere, I would recommend you watch this movie with a hot bowl of oyakodon, and then some rice crackers and a jar of sake (optional side of dried squid bits).

"Orizuru Osen" ( The Downfall Of Osen ) is a silent film directed by Herr Kenji Mizoguchi in the year 1935 ( as is well-know among silent connoisseurs, Japan still produced silent film at mid 30's ). It's a remarkable film from his early, silent career that tells the story of Damen Osen, a prostitute who works for a powerful antiques dealer. Damen Osen starts a friendship with the inexperienced Herr Sokichi who is in Tokyo to attend a course in medicine. Sokichi is brought for inside of the house to work as a servant. When the antiques dealer is imprisoned, Osen and Sokichi run away and Damen Osen decides to help Sokichi to attend the college course by paying for his studies… with her body.

Herr Mizoguchi tells this sad story about the miserable life of two poor souls in flashback and with elegant camera movements so characteristic in his early period. He begins and ends the film with the two main characters in a railroad station ( it is well-known that the Japanese directors likes to film trains as much this German Count likes go to soirées… ). Neither knows the other and they meet in an accidental way. Sokichi, a reputable doctor, will recognize Osen and an unexpected revelation will be for him even a painful fact. The circle is completed by Herr Mizoguchi with a perfect, beautiful but disturbing finale.

Damen Osen and Herr Sokichi are two helpless souls ( developed by Mizoguchi's mastery of physical and psychological human portraits ) exposed to unscrupulous people in grinding surroundings ( developed by Mizoguchi's masterful characteristic visual style ). The two don't need love itself ( or at least they have enough comforting each other ) but rather protection in order to overcome so many setbacks. It's a story of pure, idealized love.

In the whole film there is a sense of the futility of life, no time for hopes or redemptions for their main characters, but thanks to Mizoguchi visual poetry this human tragedy has inside a bizarre, sad beauty hard to grasp.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this Germanic Count must to brighten up himself by imposing serious German traditional will.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien

Isuzu Yamada was sold to a brothel as a young girl and now works for a cruel and shady antiques dealer as a come-on in a deal. He is trying to swindle some monks, who need to rebuild their temple, out of some valuable statues. She has taken under her wing the very humble Daijirô Natsukawa, a would-be medical student. She wants him to be a great man and turns in her employers and pays for the boy's tuition.... but where is she to get money to let him complete his studies?

Kenji's Mizoguchi's film of a woman's dedication in an unthinking man's world is a slow and often harrowing movie, with many an elaborate set. It is very open in its attitudes towards its characters; Natsukawa is so humble, he is a wet rag; their employers are monsters; Nastukawa is an orphan with a blind grandmother to complete the air of pathos.

Mizoguchi uses camera movement in an interesting manner to mark the passage of the plot: the early scenes contain many pans, from one scene to the next, frequently zip cuts. As the movie progresses, however, the pans become slower, and cuts begin to dominate. It's just one of the techniques of silent movie-making that he would bring into the sound era.

Pre-War Mizoguchi masterpiece, THE FALL OF OSAN was from an original also known as "DUCK AND NOODLE SOUP BOUGHT WITH THE EARNINGS OF A PROSTITUTE" which says about everything. Possibly the most Japanese film ever made, every movement redolent of internalized emotion, playing out to regret, guilt, sacrifice and immutable destiny. The opening and closing shots among the most powerful in cinema. If you don't feel a punch in the chest then you're dead.

This came second on a double bill. I tried to sit through it, but after watching "A Page of Madness" this just didn't measure up. The film falls between the silent & sound eras. It tells the tale of a male servant who is taken in by a geisha and given the support to attend school as his mother would have wished. The opening scene is very interesting & I don't want to spoil it. However, while the movie may have been one of the first (if not, then the first) Japanese sound film, it's experimental nature really ruins it for modern viewers. The film uses a narrator to relay what the dialogue or thoughts of the actors would be. To add to that, the film also uses intertitles with the dialogue (and I saw it with the addition of English subtitles, for both the narration & the intertitles). For a good part of the beginning, there is my screen time devoted to intertitles than to the actual action of the film. All this narration/explanation is really overkill for a contemporary audience. Ironically, I found it less understandable (perhaps because this overkill was putting me to sleep) despite it being more literal, than "Page of Madness" which was completely silent and had no intertitles. For that reason, I consider it more of a curio for film historians because of the way it introduced sound, but otherwise not one of the more interesting of the early years of film.