Ugetsu

By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.

Ugetsu was restored by The Film Foundation and Kadokawa Corporation at Cineric Laboratories in New York. Special thanks to Masahiro Miyajima and Martin Scorsese for their consultation on this restoration. Restoration funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in association with The Film Foundation and Kadokawa Corporation.

Japan
1953
97 minutes
Black & White
1.37:1
Japanese
Spine #309

Special Features

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary by critic, ﬁlmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a 1975 documentary by Kaneto Shindo
Two Worlds Intertwined, a 2005 appreciation of Ugetsu by Masahiro Shinoda
Process and Production, a 2005 interview with Tokuzo Tanaka, ﬁrst assistant director on Ugetsu
Interview from 1992 with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa
Trailers
An essay by film critic Phillip Lopate (Blu-ray and DVD) and three short stories that influenced Mizoguchi in making the film (Blu-ray only)

Cover by Michael Boland

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 2 Discs $20.96 SRP: $29.95

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

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Special Features

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary by critic, ﬁlmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a 1975 documentary by Kaneto Shindo
Two Worlds Intertwined, a 2005 appreciation of Ugetsu by Masahiro Shinoda
Process and Production, a 2005 interview with Tokuzo Tanaka, ﬁrst assistant director on Ugetsu
Interview from 1992 with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa
Trailers
An essay by film critic Phillip Lopate (Blu-ray and DVD) and three short stories that influenced Mizoguchi in making the film (Blu-ray only)

Cover by Michael Boland

Cast & Credits

Cast

Machiko Kyo: Lady Wakasa
Masayuki Mori: Genjuro
Kinuyo Tanaka: Miyagi
Sakae Ozawa: Tobei
Mitsuko Mito: Ohama
Kikue Mori: Ukon
Ryosuke Kagawa: Village headman
Ichiro Amano: Boatman
Sugisaku Aoyama: Old priest
Ichisaburo Sawamura: Genichi

Credits

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
From Tales of Moonlight and Rain by: Akinari Ueda
Screenplay: Matsutaro Kawaguchi
Screenplay: Yoshikata Yoda
Director of photography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Art director: Kisaku Ito
Set designer: Uichiro Yamamoto
Costumes: Shima Yoshimi
Costumes: Tadaoto Kainosho
Music: Fumio Hayasaka
Sound: Iwao Otani
Sound: Akira Suzuki
Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Makeup: Zenya Fukuyama
Hair: Ritsu Hanai

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Kenji Mizoguchi

Director

Often named as one of Japan’s three most important filmmakers (alongside Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu), Kenji Mizoguchi created a cinema rich in technical mastery and social commentary, specifically regarding the place of women in Japanese society. After an upbringing marked by poverty and abuse, Mizoguchi found solace in art, trying his hand at both oil painting and theater set design before, at the age of twenty-two in 1920, enrolling as an assistant director at Nikkatsu studios. By the midthirties, he had developed his craft by directing dozens of movies in a variety of genres, but he would later say that he didn’t consider his career to have truly begun until 1936, with the release of the companion films Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, about women both professionally and romantically trapped. Japanese film historian Donald Richie called Gion “one of the best Japanese films ever made.” Over the next decade, Mizoguchi made such wildly different tours de force as The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), The 47 Ronin (1941–42), and Women of the Night (1948), but not until 1952 did he break through internationally, with The Life of Oharu, a poignant tale of a woman’s downward spiral in an unforgiving society. That film paved the road to half a decade of major artistic and financial successes for Mizoguchi, including the masterful ghost story Ugetsu (1953) and the gut-wrenching drama Sansho the Bailiff (1954), both flaunting extraordinarily sophisticated compositions and camera movement. The last film Mizoguchi made before his death at age fifty-eight was Street of Shame (1956), a shattering exposé set in a bordello that directly led to the outlawing of prostitution in Japan. Few filmmakers can claim to have had such impact.