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Ugetsu - Criterion Collection
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List Price: $39.95
Our Price: $34.99
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Manufacturer: Criterion Collection
Starring: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Eitarô Ozawa, Ikio Sawamura
Directed By: Kenji Mizoguchi
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0037429209325
Format: Black & White
Label: Criterion Collection
Manufacturer: Criterion Collection
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Criterion Collection
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-11-08
Running Time: 94
Studio: Criterion Collection
Theatrical Release Date: 1954-09-07
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Editorial Reviews:
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The great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi's crowning achievement, set in sixteenth-century Japan, a period of bloody civil war, and focusing on an ambitious potter haunted by a beautiful ghost and a farmer who dreams of becoming a samurai. A classic com
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mysterious Story!
Comment: This is a great story of a man who dreams of being a great man of wealth and position in 15th century Japan. A man who is a farmer and a potter abandons his wife and child in war torn Japan to marry a woman with high status and who also turns out to be a ghost. He becomes a great samurai and wealthy, but what of his wife and child?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great
Comment: Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari), a 1953 film by Kenji Mizoguchi, which won the Venice Film Festival's top prize (the Silver Lion Award for Best Direction) that year, is one of the best films to ever deal with the subject of human desire, and not only the obvious sexual aspects of the emotion. While ostensibly it is labeled a ghost story, since its Japanese title means Tales Of The Pale And Silvery Moon After The Rain, the story is a complex one that hides behind its astonishingly simple narrative and revelation, and is based upon two tales from a 1776 book of tales by Ueda Akinari, and a third story from French writer Guy de Maupassant. Mizoguchi and screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda adapted elements from all three tales to create something new and relevant.
It follows the lives and desires of two couple who inhabit a small Japanese village during the 16th Century, when civil wars and ravaging bands of Samurai soldiered plundered the countryside near Lake Biwa in Omi province. The two male characters, who may be friends, or relatives, are Genjurô (Masayuki Mori), a farmer and master potter, and Tobei (Sakae Ozawa, aka Eitarô Ozawa). Tobei is a dimwit and the assistant potter to Genjurô, and he dreams of military glory as a samurai, but cannot even handle a sword properly. Genjurô has a wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and young son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura), and Tobei has a wife, as well. Her name is Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), and they bicker in a very Ralph and Alice Kramden sort of way, while Genjurô and Miyagi seem to have a more overtly stable and loving relationship.
Technically, this film is not as overtly sophisticated as Rashomon, yet it does not suffer from the great dramatic letdown that film does. Kazuo Miyagawa's black and white cinematography is outstanding, especially in the studio shots of the river and the ghostly lady's mansion. The seduction scene, where Lady Wakasa is dancing and singing, is oddly hypnotic, and one of the most surreal moments in the film. Much of the night scenes in the film remind me of Carl Theodor Dreyer's great Vampyr, a film with darker similarities to this one. Also, the camera is almost always moving, in this film. Very few things are static, and long takes dominate the film, with very few cuts, and then only when needed to jar the viewer for a reason. Thus, when the film ends showing us that little has changed in the valley beyond the village, we are left with a disjunct feeling between the apparent stasis of life in that time and place, and the great changes we've seen take place. That we never see the Lady, nor her retinue, nor Miyagi at film's close, portrayed in a Hollywood ghostly fashion, can confuse, a bit, upon a first viewing, but on a second viewing all becomes clear in this simple, but never simplistic, tale.
The actors are also uniformly good. Sakae, as Tobei, and Mitsuko as Ohama, are a delight, comically, and in rare dramatic moments. Machiko, as Lady Wakasa, shows dramatic improvement in just two years, as an actor, from her debut in Rashomon. Yet, the film really belongs to Kinuyo, as Miyagi, and the sublime Masayuki, as Genjurô. Masayuki was outstanding as the murdered husband in Rashomon, acting with his face alone. But, this role gives him drama and comedy, horror and befuddlement, and were it not for his name and the commentary of the film, I'd have had no idea the same actor played both roles, for he looks totally different as a peasant farmer than a samurai nobleman. One scene, before he is to go to the Lady's mansion, we see him looking at a fancy kimono, and he imagines Miyagi looking at it, even though we know she cares little for such things. The look in Genjurô's eyes, contrasted with the reality we know, says more of the insecurities males feel in sexual relationships than many whole films devoted to the subject have.
While the film is in no way a modern psychological portrait of the sort Ingmar Bergman would later specialize in, a viewer is left with a firm idea of who all these characters were, simply by how their behavior is the same, yet parallaxed, by the contrast between the early scenes, and later ones that are recapitulative. Mizoguchi also made a bit of a career specialty in focusing on the lives of women, and even though the two male characters are the ostensible leads, the female characters shoulder much of the narrative and dramatic load, and do so consummately well. Ugetsu is a great film, made by an artist at his peak, and even with the misgivings its creator had, it stands the test of time immaculately.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ugetsu
Comment: Ugetsu - Criterion Collection Ugetsu is one of those films great directors have referred to over subsequent years. The film draws on the ancient Eastern tradition of seeking fulfillment in flights of fantasy, ignoring the deeper meaning and satisfaction of everyday life. Kenzo Mizoguchi is a brilliant director whose influence cannot be underestimated.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mizoguchi--a true master of his craft
Comment: Director Kenji Mizoguchi was a perfectionist. On the set he would often demand hundreds of retakes. Plus his takes were often long in duration, his signature style known as "flowing scroll"--one shot, one scene. His high standards and methods of precision are never more evident than in Ugetsu.
This story blends the supernatural world in with our earthly domain. There is a constant dreamlike, eerie atmosphere that is soothing and graceful. It begins to unfold in a poor rural 16th century village where the fear and apprehension of war is steadily looming.
Two men get caught up in dreams of wealth and foolish ambition. They have delusions of profiting from the effects of the war. Their misguided actions shape this haunting tale of love and loss. Life and death flow simultaneously side by side and our bound to keep you mesmerized to the screen.
This is commonly referred to as the most beautiful film ever made.
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Criterion has presented an excellent 2-disc edition with tons of special features.
Interviews, appreciations, documentaries. Plus a terrific 72 page book that includes the three short stories that influenced the making of this film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ghosts and Shadows
Comment: Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! I am now a Kenji Mizoguchi fan and plan to check out more of his work. Few ghost stories come near this movie in quality. Simply terrific fable.
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