Ugetsu

I won’t presume to rate this acclaimed masterwork from Kenji Mizoguchi, but I am looking forward to seeing more of his work, if the Criterion Collection brings other films to DVD. He might join Kurosawa and Ozu in my pantheon of directors, but I will need to see Utamaro, Oharu, Sansho, and others to know. Whatever films of his I saw decades ago did not particularly register on me, and I’m not even sure whether I’ve seen Ugetsu before. Certainly it is strange and misty enough to have disappeared from my mind like an unremembered dream. A ghost fable set during 16th century feudal wars, the film follows two peasants motivated by the disruption of war to go on foolish quests that their wives ultimately pay for. One is a potter who drifts into the clutches of a mysterious noblewoman; the other is a wannabe samurai who finds a success he didn’t bargain for. One viewing was not sufficient to break down my own predilection for realism, or to enter into such an alien mindset, but there is certainly moviemaking magic at work here, in pictorial design, startling camera moves, a quality of light and atmosphere that keeps the film balanced on the edge of dream and wakefulness. Reading afterwards I found out, for example, that Mizoguchi directed the soldiers to move like animals, which explains the nonnaturalism that bothered me in the rape and pillage scenes (though I bought into that same direction in Malick’s New World) -- better to look at them as something like the winged monkeys of Oz rather than the samurai of Kurosawa. The acting style as a whole requires some getting used to; it’s also helpful to see the film as a Japanese scroll, to explain transitions that are otherwise inexplicable. So I would recommend this only to the most adventurous viewers, despite its ranking in critics’ polls of the best all time This and Rashomon initiated an international vogue for Japanese film after postwar reconstruction. (1953, dvd.)