Director Kenji Mizoguchi secured his international reputation in the early 1950s with such films as Sansho the Bailiff, The Life of Oharu, and Ugetsu. His output was prolific and varied, but the plight of women was a recurring interest throughout his career, with many of his films centered on strong, resilient women characters.
Criterion has released "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women," a box set in the company's Eclipse series that features four films that focus on the plights of women among the lower strata of Japanese society.
The set includes two of Mizoguchi's early sound films (Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, both from 1936), a mid-career gem (Women of the Night, 1948) and the great director's final film (Street of Shame, 1956). All use the topic of prostitution to examine the hardships faced by women in a patriarchal society that renders them helpless without the aid of men.
Sisters of the Gion follows two sisters and their vastly different approaches to life and their profession. Omocha (Isuzu Yamada) is ruthless, manipulative and grimly pragmatic, determined to use whomever she can to claw her away above her meager station. Her bold, gritty crassness calls to mind Barbara Stanwyck's Lily Powers from the 1934's Baby Face. Omocha's sister Umekici (Yoko Umemura) is far more fatalistic, resigned to her station in life. Neither approach works out too well in the end as the women are still unable to get ahead and are finally reduced to despair.
Mizoguchi's final film, Street of Shame, was originally to be shot with a documentary approach, taking his camera and crew to the Yoshiwara, Edo's red-light district. However, ongoing political battles seeking to ban prostitution made brothel owners wary of participating in a project that would bring them unwanted attention at a sensitive time, forcing Mizoguchi to return to the studio.
Street of Shame tracks the lives of five prostitutes at a brothel called Dreamland. Again, one is manipulative and ruthless; Yasumi lends money to her colleagues at ever-increasing interest rates, and entices a young, lovestruck businessman to embezzle from his employer with the false hope that she will one day marry him. Mickey, a brash young beauty who dresses like a 1950s American high school girl, has sought the geisha life as an almost welcome reprieve from life under the oppressive reign of a neglectful and possibly abusive father. Yorie clings to the idea of marriage as her salvation, but when she finally takes the plunge she finds she has only escaped into a life of loveless drudgery. Hanae has a young child and an unemployed husband and is thus the only breadwinner in the family. When her husband attempts suicide, she tackles him and hits him, demonstrating with her wordless fury that his supreme act of self-pity would have rendered moot the enormity of her sacrifice. Yumeko left the country to work as a prostitute in order to support her son, hoping that he would be able to support her when he grew to manhood. Now a young man, the son comes to the city to inform his mother that he will be taking a job at a factory, but when he learns how she has been supporting him over the years, he turns on her.
Street of Shame was a commercial success and a few months after its release, prostitution was outlawed in Japan, with many attributing at least some of the credit to Mizoguchi and his final film.
Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women. $59.95. Criterion Collection. www.criterion.com.
Osaka Elegy (1936). 71 minutes.
Sisters of the Gion. (1936). 69 minutes.
Women of the Night. (1948). 74 minutes.
Street of Shame. (1956). 85 minutes.
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