Chikamatsu monogatari

This film was near the end of a wonderful sequence of films made near the end of his life by Mizoguchi. As Tony Raines says in the DVD extra for the Masters of Cinema edition this was a studio project that he was not wholly enthusiastic about. This shows a little in the film as it lacks some of the real flair and emotional power of some of his earlier great films. However, it shares with them his wonderful flowing camera and great cinematography. Its also a terrific story, based originally on a story from the great Japanese 17th Century playwright Monzaemon Chikamatsu (hence the Japanese name, A Tale from Chikamatsu). The screenplay is skillfully worked from the original story, which depends a lot of some pretty unlikely coincidences.

The film has a great cast, although the lead actor (and major star at the time) Kazuo Hazegawa is a little old for the role of the shy lover. Kyoko Kagawa is great as the wife of a powerful merchant who is mistakenly accused of having an affair with her servant, but then falls in love with him as they both go on the run.

As you'd expect from a Mizoguchi film, technically it is flawless, with lovely sets and some beautiful camera work. The Masters of Cinema version on DVD is a beautiful restoration. For Mizoguchi fans, this film is well worth getting, but for those who haven't seen many of his films it would be better to start with some of his earlier masterpieces.

"Chikamatsu Monogatari" , (aka "The Crucified Lovers"), is one Mizoguchi's lesser known works and yet it is no less extraordinary for all that. It is, of course, typical of its director; another tragic tale of corrupted innocence and the terrible hand fate plays in people's lives, in this case a wrongful accusation of adultery over a very simple misunderstanding. Shakespeare could have written this.

It's set in the 17th century and it paints as relentless a picture of cruelty and hypocrisy as Mizoguchi has given us and he shoots it almost in semi-darkness, (even the exteriors take place at night or are shrouded in mist or in shadow), so there is no escape for its protagonists nor for us; the inevitability of the lovers' fate is clearly signposted from the beginning.

As the couple forced to acknowledge their love for each other by unfolding events Kazuo Hasegawa and Kyoko Kagawa are superb, particularly Kagawa whose performance as the wronged wife is a masterclass in subtlety and tenderness. This is surely one of the key films in all of Japanese cinema.

I never heard of Mizoguchi's "Chikamatsu monogatari" before until a friend of mine who loves Mizoguchi's films showed it to me recently. It is a beautiful, haunting, and emotionally involving study of forbidden love between a rigid merchant's wife, Osan, and her devoted servant, Mohei, in 17th century Kyoto. The lovers are unfairly punished for having an affair; Osan escapes her husband's home while Mohei is forced into exile. "Chikamatsu" is a highly charged work, but I'm not entirely sure if I would call it a masterpiece on par with "Zangiku monogatari", "The Life of Oharu", "Ugetsu", "Sansho dayu", and "Princess Yang Kwei Fei" - Mizoguchi's richest and most beautiful films. The photography is extraordinarily ravishing and evocative, with Mizoguchi's masterful fluid camera. Also, the sound quality of "Chikamatsu" is interestingly rich and astounding, but the film doesn't stay with you for a while like those aforementioned films. Overall, this is a minor Mizoguchi: beautiful and haunting at times, but inferior to his renowned masterpieces.

This is certainly a good film, beautifully photographed and evocatively acted. Yet one should certainly criticize it, and Mizoguchi, for it is not without flaws and weaknesses. Mizoguchi really cared for women, and wanted to make statements on man's lack of sympathy and total cruelty, yet he sometimes gets ahead of himself in trying to make this statement by adopting the wrong means. This is certainly a case in 'the Crucified Lovers', 'Princess Yang Kwei Fei' and 'Zankiku monogatari'. He sets the scenario in feudal Japan, which leaves the viewer at the end with the partially right exclamation: "boy, does feudalism suck, I'm glad that it is over...". And true, some of the scenarios such weaker films of Mizoguchi present would be literary impossible today. Also, his women characters sometimes become archetypes of unrealistic self-sacrifice, which also simplifies the scenario less appealing. Saying that, "Crucified Lovers" is a good film, with such few relative weaknesses, though the sometimes chilly, cynical prose by Ueda, the screenwriter helps this film allot. I still highly prefer and recommend Mizoguchi's 'realistic, 'contemprary' films of 1936: 'Osaka Elegy' and 'Sisters of the Gion', as well as his late masterpieces, in which he showed more restraint and subtlety: 'Ugetsu', 'Sansho Dayu', and 'The Life of Oharu'.

I think this makes it official: no major filmmaker ever utilized lakes as well as did Kenji Mizoguchi. Between the canoe chase in Sansho the Bailiff and the suicide attempt seen in this film, it can safely be said that the Japanese director was the cinematic master of lake imagery.

The images here, by Mizoguchi and DP Kazuo Miyagawa, who also lensed many of Kurosawa's most iconic films, are consistently gorgeous. More than that, though, Chikamatsu is, I think, the most perfect encapsulation of Mizoguchi's central theme: the self-annihilating ecstasy that comes with turning one's back on an unjust social order.

Perhaps "encapsulate" is a particularly good word to use because one of the reasons the themes are so brazen is that Mizoguchi is here working on a far smaller canvas than he usually allows himself. This film is quite short by the director's standards, and deals with a smaller number of characters. Perhaps because of its less epic scope I would rank it just below the previously mentioned Sansho the Bailiff as my favorite film by this great director.