Les musiciens de Gion

Kenji Mizoguchi's splendid "Gion Bayashi" begins like a docu-drama on the role of the geisha in Japanese society before turning into the kind of melodrama you might expect from Douglas Sirk. Eiko is the 16 year old trainee geisha and Miyoharu is the older, more experienced geisha who, as a friend of Eiko's late mother, takes her under her wing and who develops a strong, sisterly bond with her.

Few male directors could have handled this material with the empathy Mizoguchi brings to the subject. Men are basically secondary characters and are mostly seen as predators and Mizoguchi draws wonderful performances from his largely female cast and in particular from Michiyo Kogure as the unfortunate Miyoharu. If the film is not as well-known as some of the director's other works it remains absolutely essential nevertheless.

This movie by Kenji Mizoguchi treats one of his favorite themes: the living conditions of the geishas, here in modern Japan.

The main character in this movie is a maiko (a young apprentice geisha), sponsored by an older 'sister'. After becoming herself a geisha, the maiko doesn't accept the former rules of the game anymore. She doesn't want to sell her body to anyone or everywhere. On the other hand, the madam of the geisha house doesn't like to lose important customers. At the same time, her 'older sister' becomes an important pawn in a corruption case. A customer of a company refuses to sign a major contract, a matter of life or death for the company, if he doesn't get the geisha's favors and become her 'protector'. She has to choose between her material and her emotional (sexual) interests.

This intimate film is a critical analysis of the status of women in a Japanese society dominated by males, who believe that everything is permitted, especially with women who are bound by debts to their houses and their bosses. Kenji Mizoguchi directed this movie impeccably. Highly recommended.

A GEISHA is Miyagawa's late stage threnody with regard to those he has been steadily paying commiserations through his formidable cannon, namely, ordinary lives on the low-rung.

The English title may misguide audience by implying a young geisha's Bildungsroman in the Post- WWII Japan, that is quite right, but it only constitutes half of the story. In the beginning we are introduced to a 16-year-old Eiko (Wakao), arrives in Kyoto's Gion district and entreats named geisha Miyoharu (Kogure) to take her in as an apprentice. Eiko is saddled with her own tale of woe, his mother, a formal geisha and Miyoharu's friend, died young, her father Sawamoto (Shindô), a businessman on his irretrievable downturn, doesn't want anything to do with her. So being a geisha is her only outlet in this callous world and she takes great pride in this line-of-work, which is referred as "living works of art, intangible cultural assets" by her trainer, and resolves to not let anything cripple her work ethic, which means she will do best to please her patrons but will not be foisted into prostitution. She knows nothing about the delicate sex politics of the demimonde, so we need another character to tread into the underbelly.

Miyoharu, who gives us a first impression of materialistic and impassive when she rebuffs a client who cannot afford her service (for three months indeed), lends herself on a mother-sister figure towards the young and imprudent Eiko, and through her tactful mediation and altruistic deeds, she manages to give Eiko a decent debut merely after one-year of training, and immediately Eiko gets the attention of the district's biggest patron Kusuda (Kawazu), who is habitually prefers new blood, whereas Kanzaki (Koshiba), Kusuda's young business associate, has a different taste in women, and takes a liking to Miyoharu.

Only if both Eiko and Miyoharu would settle for these unsavory but finance-secured arrangements, there would be no kerfuffle ensuing. What happens next is inevitable when Eiko violently offends Kusuda's advances and puts their livelihood in jeopardy. Some ruffled feathers must be smoothed, and Sawamoto's gnarly advent to solicit money rubs salt into their affliction, what alternative do they have? The ending will have its say, as profound as it is poignant. What ultimately striking a chord in A GEISHA is Mizoguchi's deeply affectionate manifesto of the strength between two women, they are not consanguineous, yet, their rapport is so transcendentally dignified and soul- stirring because sometimes life could be hell but that shouldn't be the end of it, no despair needed when we can hold each other's hands and solider on.

Scale-wise, A GEISHA is on the lightweight end in Mizoguchi's yardstick, but nonetheless peppered with compositional circumspection and gifted with superlative emotional repercussions predicated on a string of prominent performances: Michiyo Kogure is beguilingly versatile which sounds like a lesser statement, checking the scenes where she wonderfully lets on courtesy, empathy, scorn and compassion alternatively when facing off an equally competent Eitarô Shindô as the grasping, repugnant Sawamoto, that is some fine acting chops; a callow Ayako Wakao is also well-attuned to Eiko's characteristics, not a soft touch as she appears and lastly, a shout-out to Chieko Naniwa, who inhabits herself so naturally as Madame Okimi, a woman who can commandeer the whole district on her say-so on top of her ever-pleasant-and-earnest camouflage. A GEISHA is after all, one of Mizoguchi's best and rightly deserves the garland.

Ayako Wakao visits Michiyo Kogure. Like Miss Kogure, Miss Wakao's mother was a geisha, and now she wishes to be an apprentice. After sorting through the girl's situation, including a father who's impoverished, Miss Kogure accepts her old friend's daughter. The expense is managed by a loan from the woman who runs the largest tea house in town, and Miss Wakao seems to have a brilliant future in front of her.... until she bites a client who tries to rape her.

Kenji Mizoguchi's movie is not actually about Miss Wakao, who at 20 appears to be half a dozen years younger. It is about the elegant Miss Kogure and the discovery.... no, the re-awakening of her revulsion at the dirty side of what is supposed to be an elegant business. At the time, a 15-year veteran of the movies, she had entered at the same age Miss Wakao was now, and had lately been playing major character roles, like the acidic wife in THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE. Here, it's a pleasure to watch her grow as a human being in Mizoguchi's always outraged phillipic about the poor position of women in old Japan and new.

As they decide to turn down two of their customers, a professional geisha and her apprentice chose unexpectedly to defy traditionalism. Perhaps one of Mizoguchi's most universally accessible films on Geishas theme and one that has definitely become the archetype for films dealing with such topics. The Japanese filmmaker had become very experienced at this stage and was able to deliver a compelling feminist drama full of defiance and protest against traditionalism's stubbornness and the suffering and misogyny that women sometimes have to endure.