So little more to ask!

This is almost a lost film ... and it is desperately, almost unendurably, sad. Oharu is betrayed, failed, cast away at every step. No happy endings. There can be no doubt about Mizoguchi’s humanity and concern as he presents the tale unemphatically and concisely, but I say “lost” for several reasons - not especially because of the sense of desolation, if patient acceptance, with which it leaves you – but for two other reasons. One is that it demands a good deal for us to take in the exact sense of the situation, especially if we are not ourselves Japanese and can only distantly perceive the social significance of customs in the seventeenth century and the Edo period. The other reason is that Mizoguchi was severely constrained in making the most of his material. His technical and financial resources were limited. Unobtrusively, nonetheless, we are given the benefit of his marvellous visual sense and his skill in directing the camera; we are given his outstanding ability to present scenes with visual as well as emotional depth and perspective ... but the technical material available was limited. Mizoguchi, as his later films would show, was one of those few directors who could use colour without letting it dominate the images or overlay their full significance. This film in particular, in its complex historical setting, really did deserve colour ... something I hardly ever say about a serious film! Here the setting is as important as the narrative: colour really would have been immensely valuable ... if it was in Mizoguchi’s hands! An excellent, if painful, film – but perhaps a little scrappy in presentation. That is partly the effect of basing it on the seventeenth century stories by Saikaku ... and both for us and for present day Japanese viewers there have been shifts in attitudes and intentions so that ambiguities enter our responses. The stories tended to deal with Oharu’s own failings: Mizoguchi’s film focuses firmly on her heartless treatment by male society ...a fine film which deserved a little more.