La rue de la honte

Mizoguchi's swan song is one of his best, personally my second favorite film after Life of Oharu. This is the story of a group of modern day prostitutes in the red light district of Tokyo. Their sad stories are basic melodramas, but they are deeply affecting nonetheless. One is working to support her sick husband and their baby; they had planned to kill themselves until she found out she was pregnant. One went into the business to support a son who now rejects disowns her as his mother. One gets out of the business by marrying, but finds that marriage is even more demeaning than prostitution. One particularly clever one is manipulating a businessman to buy her way out of the place. Another ran away from home with an American G.I. and has begun to mimic Western attitudes and dress, which is a good selling point. Machiko Kyo is the standout as Mickey, the Westernized girl. She has the single best scene, where her father comes looking for her to bring her home. It's a stock scene, really, but Mizoguchi and Machiko Kyo turn it in a direction that I really didn't expect. I was liking the film a lot before this scene without loving it, but this bit blew me away – I loved every second thereafter. Scene after powerful scene lead up to one of the most amazing final shots in a film ever. Throughout the film, we are informed that politicians are trying to outlaw prostitution. In the film, it keeps failing. Due to this film that bill was finally passed.

As its better known English title attests Mizoguchi's last film deals with the subject of prostitution but like several of the masterpieces that preceded it, it really deals with the role of women in Japan, a subject Mizoguchi returned to over and over again. "Street of Shame" is set in the present, or at least in post-war Japan, and the government are proposing anti-prostitution laws that will close the brothels down. As it is, the women who work in 'Dreamland' earn little enough.

As you might expect Mizoguchi pulls no punches. For these women life is pretty much hell with survival the name of the game. It is, of course, beautifully acted by all the women concerned and for a film dealing with such dark subject matter, isn't without humour. If the film is no masterpiece it is still quintessential Mizoguchi as well as being one of the best 'women's pictures' of the fifties. Melodrama it may be but, like the best melodramas, this one has the ring of truth.

Watching this movie almost makes me feel like delivering an apology to Mizoguchi. Thanks to the wonderful Masters of Cinema releases of his movies I've been slowly working my way through his late period movies. I love them, but I felt that the failure of so many was an excessive formality - a feeling that his characters were not real people, more symbols of various levels of society. This movie is totally different, it is packed with wonderfully realized, vivid characterizations. Ironically, its his last film, but rather than being a swansong it was absolutely cutting edge - the film has a thoroughly modern feel to it, even down to its weirdly avant garde music (the one thing about it I have to say grated with me). And I understand it was one of his biggest commercial hits, a huge success in its day.

The story follows a group of prostitutes in 'Dreamland' a typical brothel of its day in the nighttime quarter of Toyko, shortly before they were made illegal. At the time, brothels were seen as mildly disreputable, but still legitimate businesses. The women work 'voluntarily', but most are trapped due to debts and poverty. They range from the tough, selfish and westernized 'Mickey', a wonderful Machiko Kyo (unrecognizable from the ghost in Ugetsu), the very beautiful Ayako Wakao as the angelic looking but thoroughly ruthless Yasumi, Aiko Mimasu as the aging Yumeko, and a variety of other characters, all without exception wonderful and believable performances.

While humanizing all his characters, Mizuguchi doesn't pull punches about the desperate poverty of the time and the dire straits the women are in. The brothel owner repeatedly insists he is like a social worker, looking after poor women - and he is so convincing he believes it himself. The script never falls into the trap of didactic sermonizing, it simply lets the stories speak for themselves. Maybe Mizoguchi, who was no stranger to brothels in his private life had deeply ambiguous feelings for them himself.

Its interesting to compare this movie to another similar one of this period (and a personal favourite of mine) - Mikio Naruse's 'Flowing', which is much less direct and harsh, with more of an air of sadness at how a part of Japanese society was fading away - but then again, that film was set in a more genteel upmarket geisha house.

This is an immensely fine movie - structurally its amazing that such a complex story with so many characters could be so convincingly told in a relatively short run time - a lesson to all modern film makers. Its absolutely riveting and a masterclass in film making and acting.

But as a final point, films like this are often difficult to end - there is no clear way of finishing a story without a clear narrative arc and how many times have we all seen great movies that let us down with a contrived or poorly thought through ending? I won't give it away, but the ending of 'Akasen Chitai' is quite unexpected and absolutely devastating. Its starkness should by rights leave it up there with the famous last scene in '400 Blows' as one of the greatest in cinema history.

Fabulous film making, a really enjoyable and moving film, oh so beautifully shot. Every wondrous frame is a sight to behold and Mr Mizoguchi certainly knew how to exploit the 4:3 academy ratio and as it says in my booklet, don't dare watch it stretched on a widescreen TV. Set in Tokyo's red-light district of the time and against the background of political attempts to have prostitution made illegal, as well as everything else it is a tantilising glimpse of the mid fifties streets. Poverty and hypocrisy, along with the real need to literally pull those punters in. Always ravishing to watch there are additionally some stand out scenes and the controversial ending works splendidly for me with the electronic music preventing it becoming 'sentimental' or 'overplayed' as suggested by Keiko I McDonald in her 1984 biography of the director.

Visiting any of the great masters (Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi) always galvanizes me into action. I watched "The End of Summer" (1961) and was hooked. I had to see this, a late Mizoguchi, before seeing another Ozu. You know, for the rhythm. And while they are completely different in so many ways, both create such poetry that usually it takes forever for me to watch their films, since I repeatedly have to pause the film to be soaked in the images.

"Street of Shame" (1956), Mizoguchi's last film, is no different in this respect, although it does carry that ominous "last film" aura over its head, which always bodes for some sinister stuff in my personal brooding, regardless of whether the film is comic or not.

The music is provoking. It sounded so much like something out of an Imamura film that I had to wonder whether I had accidentally put in "The Insect Woman" (1963), a film I had been watching recently as well. Constantly it makes you feel that everything's slipping into a chasm, whence there's no return. And things, how do they go wrong.

The film has, overall, a very modern feel to it. Not only in the subject matter, which is in stark contrast with the jidai-geki Mizoguchi is most famed for. It's also the spirit of the film, the aesthetics, the technique. It certainly hasn't got the slightest sense of a "last film" to it.[1] On the contrary, this is a testament in the other sense of the word: evidence of his artistic vitality and boldness in choosing the unsafe way, embracing the risk. Pretty much aligned with what the film is about.

Speaking of Imamura, the film would work well alongside Imamura's masterly explorations of the seedy Japanese subcultures, or "Bakumatsu taiyôden" (1957), Kawashima's comic masterwork. Mizoguchi, with his usual ruthlessness, shows us a world that doesn't work the way we'd like, and in which the only way to survive is to fight, and in which fighting more often than not isn't enough. "Deceive, or be deceived", and still perish.

The hidden center of the film is Shizuko, the young girl who becomes a prostitute by the very end. It's all building up for that moment, where we realize with her that, as what in the context of philosophy and Oriental religion is understood as the circle of life is, in the pragmatism of the film, reduced into a horrifying prophecy of the same things happening all over again. A life lived, yet not for oneself. It's all lies, Shizuko realizes, and excuses, and sad theatre. Sad most of all because there's no way out.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] And why should it? Mizoguchi was working hard on another film, documented well in the documentary "Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director" (1975) by Kaneto Shindô. Some storyboards exist, and seeing them are among the saddest moments in film I can think of. How much I'd love to have seen whatever he had in mind.