Kenji Mizoguchi

Sisters of the Gion

Sisters of the Gion

Sisters of the Gion follows the parallel paths of the independent, unsentimental Omocha (Isuzu Yamada) and her sister, the more tradition-minded Umekichi (Yoko Umemura), both geishas in the working-class district of Gion. Mizoguchi's film is a brilliantly shot, uncompromising look at the forces that keep many women at the bottom rung of the social ladder.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1936
  • 69 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese

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Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women

Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women

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4 Discs

$47.96

Sisters of the Gion
Cast
Isuzu Yamada
Omocha
Yoko Umemura
Umekichi
Shiganoya Bendo
Shimbei
Kazuko Hisano
Oemi
Fumio Okura
Jurakudo
Taizo Fukami
Yasukichi Kimura
Eitarô Shindô
Sangoro Kudo
Sakurako Iwama
Omasa
Somenosuke Hayashiya
Furusawa’s chief clerk
Reiko Aoi
Umeryu
Shizuko Takizawa
Ochiyo
Kozo Tachibana
Tachibana
Credits
Director
Kenji Mizoguchi
Producer
Masaichi Nagata
Original story
Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay
Yoshikata Yoda
Cinematography
Minoru Miki
Editing
Tatsuko Sakane

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Kenji Mizoguchi

Director

Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi

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.

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