SILENT OZU - THREE CRIME DRAMAS: DRAGNET GIRL - ECLIPSE SERIES 42

The most straightforward, and yet most complex, entry in the Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas set from Criterion’s Eclipse imprint is 1933’s Dragnet Girl, a dual drama about families and relationships and the effect the criminal lifestyle has on the ties that bind.

Joji Oka (No Blood Relation [review]) heads the cast as the charismatic gangster Joji. Formerly a boxer, Joji stepped out of the ring when he fell in love with Tokiko (Mizoguchi and Kinoshita mainstay Kinuya Tanaka, who also appeared in Ozu’s Equinox Flower [review]). Tokiko is a tough cookie in her own right, but she prefers a more domestic crime partnership that doesn’t involve her man getting pummeled on a regular basis. Though Joji has many would-be suitors, Tokiko chasea them all off, thus making it all the more surprising when a nice, quiet girl sneaks in and legit steals Joji’s heart.

Misako (Sumiko Mizukubo, Apart from You [review]) summons the thug to a corner rendezvous to ask him to encourage her little brother, Lefty (Hideo Mitsui), to return to school and give up trying to be a boxer and a crook. He looks up to Joji and would listen. Joji is taken with Misako’s purity and selflessness, and he starts spending his days in the music store where she works, listening to classical records. It’s a far more refined musical excursion than the rowdy nightclubs he usually attends with his gang. To many, Joji is becoming soft. Never mind he’s the guy we saw beat up three bruisers all on his own just a few days before. All it takes is one dame wanting you to settle down...

As the drama ramps up, Dragnet Girl crosses similar territory as Walk Cheerfully [review]. Misako’s positive presence inspires Joji to consider getting clean, and though she initially goes to the record shop with a gun to confront Misako, Tokiko is quickly smitten with her, as well. She thinks about ditching the bad-girl lifestyle modeling herself after her rival. The only one who can’t seem to get Misako’s message of peace is the one she wants to go straight, her little brother, who resists even after his hero threatens him.

Moreso than Walk Cheerfully Ozu toys with the notion of fate in Dragnet Girl. In the psychology of the script, which was written by Tadao Ikeda, the scribe behind Walk Cheerfully and The Only Son [review], working from a story by Ozu himself (hiding behind the pseudonym James Maki), we move closer to the inescapable doom of film noir. Neither Joji nor Tokiko find it easy to make a clean break, and in part because they don’t think they deserve it. Tokiko is offered an ideal marriage by her boss, but can’t see herself stepping into a housewife’s shoes; likewise, Joji must reject Misako in order to “get over her.” When it comes down to it, the only thing that this Japanese Bonnie and Clyde can count on is each other. Whatever their path to get to true love, at least they found it together, and they can get out of it together, too. Embracing a crime trope, Ozu positions them to pull one last heist with the intention of snatching some seed money and getting out of town. It’s a pretty ballsy robbery, with Tokiko leading the charge, and an even more hairy escape when the cops come knocking. Yet, Ozu avoids the expected final shootout, seeking a different solution for his lovers. Punishment offers redemption.

Dragnet Girl actually makes a pretty convincing case for sucking it up and taking your lumps. It doesn’t hurt that the impassioned argument for toughing it out is made by Tokiko. Kinuyo Tanaka has a solid screen presence, and her confident delivery, and the complex emotional swings that get her there, makes for the most convincing acting in the movie. As perfect and angelic as Sumiko Mizukubo is as Kazuko, Tanaka brings her character down to earth, so that she is both sympathetic and relatable. She’s really the only choice for the confused Joji, who frankly comes off as kind of weak-willed and not nearly as tough as he’s intended to be.

But then, Ozu’s women generally have been the ones who have had to carry the heaviest burdens, and who do so with a quiet strength unique to them. In that, Dragnet Girl is part of a long tradition of the filmmaker, even as he would soon leave its genre trappings behind.

Other selections from the Eclipse boxed set Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas are reviewed here: That Night's Wife.

THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM - #832

If there are two types of stories that tend to be full of big emotion and drama, it’s the coming-of-age tale and the backstage tell-all. Put the two together--adolescent angst and performer’s ego--and all bets are off.

Unless, of course, you’re watching Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1939 film The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum. Though the script is full of melodramatic situations, including a Shakespearean split between father and son and a woman who sacrifices her health to see her husband achieve his greatest dream, Mizoguchi is determined to present it without histrionics, adopting a film style that is more observant than intimate, mimicking the experience of seeing the kabuki plays his characters perform in, shooting the entire story as if sitting in the middle seat inside the theater. No close-ups, no shouting, but heartbreaking all the same.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum follows Kikunosuke (Shotaro Hanayagi), the adopted son of one of the greatest kabuki performers of their age (played by Gonjuro Kawarazaki). Young Kiku is not a very good actor, and he finds himself torn between false flattery and bitter sniping. When the family’s nanny, Otoku (Kakuko Mori), tells him the truth, the unselfishness of her feeling for him makes Kiku take notice. He becomes determined to improve his art and make his own name in the world. Such a declaration makes him look insubordinate, however, and when the family forbids his romance with Otoku, Kiku has had enough. He leaves to strut the boards in another town.

Otoku eventually joins him and they marry, but good fortune is not yet theirs. Kiku is still mediocre, and when his protective mentor dies, he is forced to trade his position at the theater for a spot in a traveling show--a much less respectable gig, but a gig nonetheless. It provides Kiku with the right experience, but little notice and little money. It will take an act of fate to reverse Kiku’s trajectory--fate engineered by Otoku, even though it may be too late for her to enjoy it.

The idea of needing to suffer for one’s art is not novel to Mizoguchi, but he certainly makes it seem the least romantic. Kiku isn’t a brooding Byron engineering his own disasters; rather, he is earnest and well meaning, and he doesn’t actually see that the misery he is enduring is informing his art. In fact, this may be exactly why he’s not so great on the stage: his inability to delve into his emotional life. The drive to be better is his only focus, and it only allows for selfishness, not self-reflection. Kiku’s perception is based on the public and critical reactions to each night’s play; luckily, he also has Otoku there to keep him motivated. She redirects his energies as necessary.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum is equal parts A Story of Floating Weeds and Sawdust & Tinsel [review]. It is about family as much as theatre life, with the family of performers forming a secondary clan. In a way, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum is unique in how the family rallies around the lesser amongst them, pooling their efforts to fix Kiku’s life. No man is left behind, as it were. Only in the final act does Kiku become the star of his own story. We finally see him on stage--something that Mizoguchi has mostly kept from us so far, perhaps assuming Kiku might lose our sympathy were we to see how bad he really was--showing us his comeback night, when he proves to his father’s contemporaries that he’s worthy of returning to Tokyo. For the first time, Mizoguchi really takes us onto the stage, and we get to see the man at work.

Mizoguchi fans will be drawn to The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum for Otoku as much as they are Kiku’s fall and ascendance. Perhaps moreso. Her devotion and sacrifice illustrates one of the central themes of his work, as also shown in the films in the Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women boxed set [review], where they get to take center stage themselves. As Otoku, Kakuko Mori gives an appropriately quiet, often unassuming, but deeply felt performance. How much of the others’ willingness to try to elevate her husband is based on their sympathy for her more than their liking of Kiku? Probably most of it.

She is the best example of humanity amongst people whose job it is to reflect our own humanity back at us. Not that there is any lack of it amongst the other characters in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum. What Mizoguchi has avoided is making the performers and stagehands seem alien; they aren’t grifters or fakes or exaggerated. Instead, they are warm and relatable, and as Kiku rises to his apex at film’s end, the filmmaker reminds us that regardless of this success, regardless of what we project on these performers, a star can also experience genuine pain.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

KENJI MIZOGUCHI'S FALLEN WOMEN: STREET OF SHAME - ECLIPSE SERIES 13

The final movie in Eclipse's Kenji Mizoguchi's Lost Women also turned out to be the last film the director made. 1956's Street of Shame not only shows how far Mizoguchi has come as a cinematic storyteller, but it provides a fitting finish for the thematic arc that he began with Osaka Elegy [review] in 1936.

Street of Shame is set in Tokyo's red-light district. The effects of the war that we saw in Women of the Streets [review] are still felt, particularly when the women in the film travel away from the cathouse. Much of Tokyo and the surrounding countryside have yet to be rebuilt, and at least for this pocket of society, the men have yet to reclaim their dominance, if they are around at all. Efforts to clean up the rubble, both literally and morally, are gaining traction, but there is also resistance. There is an anti-prostitution law that keeps threatening to pass, and it looms over the characters for the length of Street of Shame. If the profession is outlawed, what will the women do for income?

There are five primary women whom we follow in the film. There is the old guard, and the younger prostitutes. The older women mostly work in service to their family. Yumeko (Aiko Mimasu) has been at it the longest; her husband died twenty years ago and she's been working in the brothel to make money to raise their son. On the same front, the plain Hanae (Michiyo Kogure, Drunken Angel [review]) has taken up the profession because her husband suffers from an unnamed illness (it appears to be largely mental), and they have a baby to feed. There is also Yorie (Hiroko Machida), who dreams of leaving the job to get married. Her failed efforts serve as a cautionary tale to the others. For as rough as life is inside the salon, the women who work there have long since become accustomed to it; things are different outside their neighborhood. Change where you live, and you'll get a whole new set of problems.

While the older women appear to do what they do for others' sakes, the younger generation has taken to this work for themselves. The beautiful and calculating Yasumi (Ayako Wakao, Floating Weeds) was left with no alternative when her father was arrested for embezzlement. She carries on the family business, loan sharking on the side, and eventually conning her way into a larger payoff. Yasumi has found a way to take care of herself. She is a survivor, a predator rather than prey.

Mickey shows up at the start of the movie, a new hire at the house. Played by Machiko Kyo (Rashomon, and also Floating Weeds), Mickey strikes a more modern figure. She is curvaceous and dresses like American movie stars. Like the bad girls in Women of the Streets, she embraces the lifestyle of a juvenile delinquent, and she gets by taking what she wants and manipulating whom she can. When she steals Yorie's best client, it creates a direct clash between the generations. She represents a new cynicism, dispensing with pessimistic wisdom as if it was just practical. When her father comes looking for her, however, we learn that much of her self-possession is born of difficulty and pain.

Writer Masashige Nakamura, working from a novel by Yoshiko Shibaki, builds Street of Shame as a multi-faceted drama, giving each individual woman her own screen time. The narrative structure is almost like a series of interconnected vignettes. There are Yorie's attempts to leave, and Hanae's difficulties keeping her husband from going under, alongside Yasumi's long con and Yumeko trying to reconnect with her son. The latter two storylines have the most satisfying set-ups and conclusions. Those two women end up somewhere different at the end of Street of Shame, one better and one worse off than she started, while their co-workers struggle only to stay in place. Mickey in particular gets no real change at all. She is the unwavering center, the one who will always be, regardless of the debates of politicians and moral arbiters. Mizoguchi has been telling Mickey's story for twenty years. She and the girls like her are not going anywhere.

There is no more tragic evidence of this than the final scenes of Street of Shame, when a first-timer is tarted up and trotted out in hopes of selling her virginity for a premium. The girl is frightened and sad, but her fate is sealed. Her coalminer father can't work, she has to do something. She stands as an open-ended answer to the uncomfortable question that comes up more than once during Street of Shame. Every time the prohibitive law is raised once more, the owner of the brothel uses scare tactics on his employees. "If they take this away," he asks, "what will you do?" He acts as if he is doing them a service, but his fear mongering ends up being self-condemning. The man bullies them as if they can do anything about the law, which of course they can't. He can panic them as much or as little as he wants, it doesn't matter: their fates are sealed.

This may be the one depressing thing about Kenji Mizoguchi's Lost Women. The difficult subject matter Mizoguchi tackles never seems to get easier, the situations his characters endure never really get better. Yet, as his own skills improve, he does bring us closer to an understanding of who these women are and why they end up selling themselves. He turns our judgment to sympathy and then empathy. Street of Shame contains the most discomforting scene of all four movies, and sums up what Mizoguchi presents as the fundamental problem with how society treats ladies of the evening. When Yorie first leaves, Hanae's husband is overly eloquent in telling her to go and never come back. He says no one who works in a whorehouse is human. Mizoguchi frames this moment so that Hanae is in the shot, passively listening as her husband, who makes her life more difficult than anything, denigrates her and strips her of her dignity. She says nothing, because what can she say? Once again, a prostitute is run down by the one who benefits from her work the most. It's heartbreaking, and regardless of what else happens, ensures we, as an audience, will be on the side of the working women. After all, we have benefitted from their plight in our own way, we have watched their stories. In the long run, all an artist can do is move us, and through these four movies, Kenji Mizoguchi never failed in that regard.

KENJI MIZOGUCHI'S FALLEN WOMEN: WOMEN OF THE NIGHT - ECLIPSE SERIES 13

Okay, so maybe Kenji Mizoguchi's 1948 drama Women of the Night wasn't the best choice for a Saturday evening's entertainment. Particularly since I hadn't even started drinking. Correcting that now.

The third film in the Eclipse set Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women has some years distance from the previous entry in the box, 1936's Sisters of the Gion. Damn, a whole war actually happened during the time from one production to the next, so it's fairly understandable that Women of the Night would be so tragic and bleak. The director kept making movies in that time, including his masterwork The 47 Ronin, but Women of the Night is his first significant return to the theme explored in this collection.

World War II informs everything about the drama of Women of the Night, which was based on a contemporary novel about life in Japan at the time. Though, unlike the post-War films of Seijun Suzuki, Mizoguchi never addresses the problem of occupying U.S. troops, the effects of the combat are both felt and seen in the rubble and poverty that pushes his characters to the brink. Fusako (Kinuyo Tanaka) is struggling to get by and hoping her husband will return from Korea. She lives with her mother-in-law and tries to care for her sick child. The only man we see in this early portion is her alcoholic brother-in-law, who did return from service and does not like what he did or the outcome. His little sister Kumiko (Tomie Tsunoda) lost her husband to the fighting, as did many other women her age.

Fusako has been selling clothes to make ends meet, and though the red light district is just around the corner, refuses to degrade herself. She suffers the one-two punch of finding out her husband is dead and finally losing her son to illness, but she maintains her dignity and even manages to secure a job with her husband's former boss. In fact, things are looking up when she is reunited with her own younger sister, Natsuko (Sanae Takasugi), who she thought lost. Natsuko has returned from Korea a widow, and she bears her own scars from the fighting. Currently, she works as a hostess in a dance club.

The good times don't last. Natsuko and Fusako both strike up an affair with Fusako's boss, and when the older sister finds out, she leaves home and becomes a prostitute with the intent of punishing all men by spreading sin and disease. She believes that the men of Japan are seeking to destroy her and all women like her, so why not pre-emptively take advantage of their base desires? Her point of view is a little hard to argue with. The boss man turns out to be less than a stand-up guy, and when Kumiko tries to leave home to make her way in the world, she is taken advantage of by young male pretending to want to help. The naïve girl is deceived, raped, and pushed into prostitution herself.

Apparently Kenji Mizoguchi had been inspired by the movies that began coming out of Italy after WWII, and there is a definite influence of the Neorealist movement in evidence in Women of the Night. The choice between honest work and dishonest gain is not that far off from De Sica's father/son drama Bicycle Thieves [review], and much like similar ruins set the scene for Rossellini's Germany Year Zero [review], Japan's war-ravaged landscape provides a perfect backdrop for Mizoguchi's cautionary tale. Civilization has been ruined, and with it, any balance of right and wrong. The ladies in the movie will suffer all manner of humiliation and loss. Gone is any whiff of the hypocritical judgment of the common populace that made the struggles of the characters in Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion [review] so difficult to traverse; replacing it is a moral obligation to set things right, one that few engage with, and those who do seem inconsequential in the face of so much decay.

Mizoguchi's cast is excellent. They play their characters with nuance and, even in the worst cases, empathy. They appear to be more than simple "types," regardless of how insignificant their function in the narrative. Of particular note is the obvious divide between the sisters. Fusako is more compassionate at the start of the film, making her rejection of her previous life all the more drastic. Kinuyo Tanaka, whom Mizoguchi would use again in both Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff, could have easily resorted to a cartoonish transformation. There are plenty of examples of how she might have made Fusako less sympathetic; most of the other prostitutes look like the prototype for bad girls in 1950s juvenile delinquent exploitation pictures. Instead, Tanaka relies on weariness and disappointment more than bravado. She plays Fusako as a woman who has given up, and her whole demeanor changes as a result--she goes from humbly slumping in deference to her social betters to defiantly displaying who she is.

Sanae Takasugi is equally as good when it comes to establishing the subtle distinctions between Fusako and Natsuko. Despite the hardships she has already endured, Natsuko has not given in to despair; rather, she has gotten crafty and she masks her troubles with an erudite manner. She is a woman that is used to being taken care of and having things paid for. Takasugi (who later worked with both Ozu and Ichikawa) plays her as borderline haughty. She carries herself differently than the actress playing her sister. Again, you can make out their approach to life just in how they present themselves, and by the end of the film, their stance has pretty much swapped. For all her good posture, however, things don't go much better for Natsuko. There are no good choices left for these ladies.

Women of the Night is an unrelenting tragedy. The downward spiral of its main characters is both dizzying and deep. Unfortunately, I think Mizoguchi tips the balance too far. In its final 20 minutes or so, Women of the Night becomes comically overwrought. Everything goes wrong, and instead of just letting the bad stuff happen, Mizoguchi and his longtime collaborator, screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, inflate the aforementioned moralizing, however flailing it might be, and resort to cornball histrionics. Fusako and Kumiko are reunited in a bombed-out Christian church, complete with stained-glass windows depicting the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus. A brawl breaks out amidst the rubble, as prostitutes who are angry that Fusako would try to rescue herself and her friend from this way of life descend on them in a frenzy of violence. It might have actually worked had Mizoguchi just let them take their beatings. Instead, Fusako's protests move her attackers to tears, and the film ends with labored wailing and cries to the heavens. It's a bit much. The director seems to have lost his restraint in direct proportion to his main characters' loss of dignity.

Goddammit, pour me another drink.

KENJI MIZOGUCHI'S FALLEN WOMEN: OSAKA ELEGY/SISTERS OF THE GION - ECLIPSE SERIES 13

Just how much is $300 worth to you? It's a question that Ayako Murai, played by Isuzu Yamada, must ask herself in the 1936 movie Osaka Elegy. Directed by master dramatist Kenji Mizoguchi, using a script written by Yoshikata Yoda from Mizoguchi's original story, the film examines young Ayako, a girl in her early 20s working as a switchboard operator at a pharmaceutical company, as she is confronted with a difficult offer at a time when she can really use some help. Her father (Seiichi Takekawa) is running out of time to pay back $300 he embezzled from his work, and Ayako is lacking in options. Her boss (Benkei Shiganoya) has offered to set her up in her own apartment so she can be his mistress. She gives in, trading her honor for the money to bail her father out. She even secures a new job for him.

It's a fairly simple moral conundrum, and a fairly simple plot, but Ayako is anything but a simple character. She is at first ill-tempered, and then accepting, and before long, even scheming. After things go wrong with the boss, she zeroes in on another old man from the company (Eitaro Shindo) and bilks him for money for her brother's tuition. It's hard to tell if she is truly troubled by her adopted lifestyle. She certainly likes the trappings that come with it, and her main complaint is being left high and dry when the boss' wife finds out (she is played by Yoko Umemura, who is also in the other film covered here, along with much of the rest of the cast).

Even so, Ayako is at heart a romantic, and it's in the courtship scene with Nishimura (Kensaku Hara), an admirer, that Yamada plays the role the most naturally. It's as if this is her true self, and the rest is the put-on we suspect. Yet, Mizoguchi keeps us on our toes. He underlines Ayako's deception--she tells Nishimura she works in a beauty parlor--by setting their pivotal scene in an artificial environment. They are dining inside a department store café, but the ambient noise is piped-in recordings of birds singing. In a true outdoor scenario, their melodic whistles would make the rendezvous idyllic. Here, we know the emotional framework cannot stand.

Mizoguchi, working with cinematographer Minoru Miki, shows a facility for arranging his shots to emphasize the social positioning of the different characters. When we are first introduced to Nishimura and Ayako, they are in different parts of the office, but in sight of one another. They are a separated by the glass booth where Ayako runs the phones. Mizoguchi uses a point/counterpoint set-up to go back and forth between them, foreshadowing the fact that despite being so close, there is much distance between the would-be lovers. Later, when Ayako returns home after her shame is revealed, Mizoguchi places Ayako in the extreme foreground, while her family gives her the cold shoulder in the background. It's easily the most heartbreaking sequence in Osaka Elegy. Ayako's family subjects her to a devastating double standard. Her father stole, but his sins are forgiven. Ayako did what she did to help out, but she is rejected as a "fallen woman."

In the final scenes of Osaka Elegy, Mizoguchi transforms uncertainty into defiant determination. The audience is made to be concerned for Ayako's well being, and then we are taken along as she makes the decision we hoped she would make for herself. In the last shots of the movie, Ayako walks on with a new pride and spring in her step. As Koichi Takagi's music rose, I half expected her to break out into song. The closing image is of Ayako walking toward the camera, looking those who would judge her (the audience), directly in the eye. She may not have solved her problems or even know where she's going, but in that look, we see Ayako is determined to be judged no more.

Isuzu Yamada returns in Mizoguchi's next movie, Sisters of the Gion, which was made the same year as Osaka Elegy and serves as a kind of companion film. In fact, there is a pretty smooth transition between. Osaka Elegy ends with movement, and Sisters of the Gion opens with it. The first thing we see is a tracking shot through a curio shop that is shutting down, passing by the vultures who've come to the bankruptcy auction, and over to Furusawa (Benkei Shiganoya), the failed owner. He is in the back room, being nagged by his wife, and he's had enough. Furusawa decides to leave and go live with his geisha mistress. There is another great tracking shot here, following Furusawa down an alleyway, and then crossing the street, stopping as he goes on in the other direction. There is a noticeable overall increase in movement in Sisters of the Gion. Mizoguchi and Miki travel with their characters, taking us down corridors and alleys as if we were entering into secret places, and the camera also probes these spied-upon lives. The film's final scene has a memorable zoom, emphasizing the main character's isolation and the pointed criticism in her closing speech.

That main character in question is Omocha (played by Isuzu Yamada), and she is the younger sister to Furusawa's mistress, Umekichi (Yoko Umemura). Both women a geisha, but there is enough age difference between them that their experience with the profession is different. Umekichi has been in the "pleasure district" since she was very young, whereas Omocha was able to complete an education first. As a result, Umekichi is more servile, whereas Omocha attempts to assert more control over her life. Sisters of the Gion is essentially the story of her trying to maneuver it so that both she and her sibling have wealthy patrons. To do this, Omocha must get rid of Furusawa, convince an admiring clerk at a kimono shop to make her a dress, and then manipulate both of the men's rivals into taking her and Umekichi on as permanent mistresses. She's pretty tricky, but all of her deviousness catches up with her. In the film's final act, too many of her schemes intersect, and it threatens to leave the girl stranded.

Again, however, Mizoguchi sees a social double standard in his melodrama. (He once again crafted the story, with Yoshikata Yoda drafting the screenplay. Pretty much the only member of the main team that changed here is the editor.) Omocha's final speech doesn't just stem from frustration over her own failure, but from the belief that she is only filling a required role, one that society asks of her and then blames her for. The men want the geisha, but then the girls are shamed for their efforts. "Why do there even have to be such things as geisha?" she cries.

It's an interesting question, and proof that the ethical hypocrisy of "slut shaming" has been around for quite a while. Despite Omocha's brattiness, and partially because of Yamada's charisma as an actress, our sympathies largely lie with her through Sisters of the Gion. She's right, her sister is a doormat, and Furusawa is a lout. The kimono clerk (Taizo Fukami) makes a stupid decision, but for selfish reasons. All the men want something from the geisha, and they want it without any lasting commitment or conseqeunce. Omocha sees that she has to look out for herself, because any one of these guys will--and does--leave her at the first sign of trouble.

Both Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion could have easily slipped into "crime doesn't pay moralizing," and had these been post-code American movies, they probably would have. What Mizoguchi has done is progressive, but he's sly about it. The drama is nuanced enough that neither the women nor those who dismiss them are completely right or wrong, and that's all the more daring when you think about it. People love absolutes, and they love to be absolved. Mizoguchi has taken a chance in confronting these cultural standards head-on and examining them honestly, putting blame where it belongs, including with some who may be watching. It's a gamble that pays off. Both films continue to be relevant nearly eighty years later, which is a sad commentary all on its own.