Ugetsu (1953)

A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.

Director:

Kenji Mizoguchi

Writers:

Matsutarô Kawaguchi (adaptation), Hisakazu Tsuji (idea) (as Kyûchi Tsuji)

Stars:

Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Kinuyo Tanaka

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Machiko Kyô	...	Lady Wakasa
Mitsuko Mito	...	Ohama
Kinuyo Tanaka	...	Miyagi
Masayuki Mori	...	Genjurô
Eitarô Ozawa	...	Tôbei (as Sakae Ozawa)
Sugisaku Aoyama	...	Old Priest
Mitsusaburô Ramon	...	Captain of Tamba Soldiers
Ryôsuke Kagawa	...	Village Master
Kichijirô Ueda	...	Shop Owner
Shôzô Nanbu	...	Shintô Priest
Kikue Môri	...	Ukon
Ryûzaburô Mitsuoka	...	Soldier
Ichirô Amano	...	Boatsman
Eigorô Onoe	...	Knight
Saburô Date	...	Vassal

Storyline

In the beginning of the springtime in the period of the Japanese Civil Wars of the Sixteenth Century in Lake Biwa in the Province of Omi, the family man farmer and craftsman Genjurô travels to Nagahama to sell his wares and makes a small fortune. His neighbor Tobei that is a fool man dreams on becoming a samurai, but he can not afford to buy the necessary outfit. The greedy Genjurô and Tobei work together manufacturing clay potteries, expecting to sell the pieces and enrich; however, their wives Miyage and Ohama are worried about the army of the cruel Shibata that is coming to their village and they warn their ambitious husbands. Their village is looted but the families flee and survive; Genjurô and Tobei decide to travel by boat with their wives and baby to sell the wares in a bigger town. When they meet another boat that was attacked by pirates, Genjurô decides to leave his wife and son on the bank of the river, promising to return in ten days. Genjurô, Tobei and Ohama raise a large...

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Plot Keywords:

samurai | civil war | ambition | japan | 16th century | 

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Genres:

Drama | Fantasy | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

7 September 1954 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ugetsu

Filming Locations:

Daiei Studios, Tokyo, Japan

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,154, 5 March 2017

Gross USA:

$11,197

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$24,959

Company Credits

Production Co:

Daiei Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

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Goofs

After the soldier cuts off the general's head there's no blood on his sword.

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Connections

Featured in Pop Culture Beast's Halloween Horror Picks: The Body Snatcher (2015)

User Reviews

The illusionary world

You may read elsewhere about the film's (and the filmmaker's) boundless humanism, the graceful cinematography, the classical composition; platitudes about these abound on the web, instead I want to direct your attention elsewhere.

It's a really really simple film if we analyze academically - yet, always so curiously, so amusingly, it's these academical treatises that rumble on endlessly with their dry, boring 'insights' about the mise-en-scene. But a film handled with the elegance and competence of someone who knows about more than filmmaking; who just happens to be able to express himself in film, and so can posit us inside the film in richer ways than simply cinematic.

What I mean is this: on the surface this is one of the narratives on bad karma the Japanese were so fond of sharing with themselves, an older story from the late 18th century dressed up in film material. It is about two men who sow the seeds of their own undoing by pursuing status and wealth. Civil war tears the land, they exploit this to their advantage. One of them is merely a pompous buffoon, and through cowardice he gets to be a samurai - its own comment on the privileged caste. His punishment is ordinary, a simple irony. But the other, the sadder loss of the two, is a skilled artisan; a potter who could enrich lives by giving but instead devotes himself to accumulating. It is he who is granted a supernatural, extraordinary vision to remind him how far he has strayed. Ghosts appear to redress the balance, signifiers of a troubled soul.

That's all unexceptionally fine, but for me the film's power rests elsewhere. The Japanese have given us since much better treatises on karma, Straits of Hunger and Sword of Doom from the following decade are two of them.

We may be inclined to rest our interpretation here with a passing comment on great camera-work, because all of this is more or less readily available to us, it makes some immediate sense. The closest type of film we have to this here in the West is film noir, and we have seen plenty of that already that this may even seem outdated; but noir was generally a semi-conscious product, made by artists who could feel nagging them inside the anxieties of a new life in the city but not quite put to words. So we got feverish dreams intuited from a restless sleep.

This is different. It comes from a long rich tradition of landscape painting, where the words (or images) are the expression of what has already been embodied. The painter impregnated with the outer images of everyday nature, reconstitutes reality on his scroll as the landscape of that interior heart-mind where the universe of myriad images dwells.

In other words: Hokusai did not paint Mt. Fuji because he thought it would look good, rather it looked good because he was meditating with his brush on the source of his life-world. Being able to see from inside, the result flowed out effortlessly, it floated on paper. So even though the landscapes are shown to be cascading up and down in forceful motions, our gaze is directed to the center of a profound repose that is immanent in all. The image itself is both the act of meditational devotion, and for us on the other end the space of contemplation.

So if we put Ugetsu to words it may seem pedantic, laborious. Yes, the pursuit of status and wealth is shown to be disastrous, but didn't we know already? Yes, eventually the soul is left with a lesson in humility, the acceptance of suffering and hard work - a work that unconditionally gives back, one of extraordinary humanity now. But if instead we contemplate on these notions using images the filmmaker has used to contemplate himself in painting them?

Look for the scene on a boat, we lose our characters from sight as they lose sight of themselves. Or later near the end, how the emptiness resonates when one of them sees for the first time the ruins of the illusionary world he has inhabited. It's a stunning accomplishment by a skilled artisan; we are always the Outer self, ignorant, desiring, our gaze deceived by folly like theirs, but eventually awakened when they are.

Ignore the voice-over that closes the film, it's a misstep and not a cinematic device. Allow this to sink deeper. When our potter is confronted with supernatural malice, temple bells chime in the soundtrack their reminder of Buddhist stillness in the face of mishap.