Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women

One of Japan's all-time greatest directors, Kenji Mizoguchi helmed several masterpieces (including The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff, all available from the Criterion Collection). This four-disc set collects a handful of his most important earlier films. Although Mizoguchi had been making movies since the silent era, his international reputation wasn't achieved until after World War II, when 1952's The Life of Oharu created a sensation, both in Japan and abroad. Before the war, Mizoguchi settled on the central theme—the epic suffering of women in Japanese society—that would come to dominate his work for the rest of his career. Drawing from Japan's rich tradition of female-centered art and literature (specifically the writings of novelist Kafu Nagai on prostitution), Mizoguchi's stories of struggling, downtrodden, or otherwise “fallen” women were new and controversial on the Japanese film scene. Osaka Elegy (1936), written by Yoshikata Yoda (who scripted nearly all of Mizoguchi's subsequent films in the same social-realist vein), concerns the wretched fate of a switchboard operator who has an affair with her married boss, a man who promised to support her and her ailing father. Mizoguchi's masterful follow-up, Sisters of Gion (1936), concerns two geisha sisters in Kyoto's Gion district (one modern-minded, the other rigidly traditional) who clash over how to deal with the men who control their lives. Women of the Night (1948) and—the director's final film—Street of Shame (1956) both revolve around social outcasts who've fallen into prostitution, struggling to survive and forced to compromise both body and soul as they experience daily disappointments. As dour as these brief plot descriptions may sound, Mizoguchi's “fallen women,” presented through the prism of the director's signature compassion, nevertheless come across as resilient and tenacious figures driven by strong survival instincts. The 13th volume in Criterion's extra-less Eclipse line, this set is highly recommended. (J. Shannon)