The Crucified Lovers (1954)

An adult tragedy of two pursued lovers during Japan's feudal period. It was a rigid society divided by class and gender. Mohei, a talented and decent scroll maker with a promising future, belongs to the servant class. A relatively minor infraction on his part is turned into a major offense by his nasty employer, and when the Master throws Mohei out and has charges brought against him, the Master's wife happens to discover that the Master has been having "illicit adulterous affairs" on the side.The punishment is literal crucifixion for Mohai, so the Master's wife helps him escape and runs away with him. The unyielding Master Scrollmaker sics the authorities on both of them. The wife is on the verge of suicide, but recovers her desire to live when she discovers that she and Mohai have secretly loved each other for years. She willingly joins Mohai in their journey up hill and down dale and for this she too is charged and faces crucifixion.It's a story for grown up sensibilities because the emotional bonds involved -- not just between the pair of illicit lovers but their friends and relatives -- are intricate. The parents don't want them around because if they're caught hiding the fugitives, they face the same punishment. Everyone is ready to squeal on them because what the lovers are doing is "against the law." The performances are adequate once you accept and get past the Japanese filigrees. The fugitive couple are both fine but some of the supporting players are reaching for the stars.I won't spell out the bittersweet ending. The movie itself is worth catching, filled with tension, intrigue, and action.

"A Story From Chikamatsu" (Lit.). Viewed on Streaming. Restoration = nine (9) stars; cinematography = eight (8) stars; subtitles = seven (7) stars; music = two (2) stars. Director Kenji Mizoguchi's fascination with classical literature from and dramas originally written for the Japanese puppet theater (that later became stage plays) during the Edo period couldn't be more obvious. "Chikamatsu" is a pen name (not a place in Japan!) of a playwright who created puppet dramas but is probably best remembered for his domestic plays of love and suicides written in the early 18th Century that seemed to cater to women audiences. Mizoguchi's scenario starts with a purely accidental romantic encounter and continues (through many twists and turns) as a high socioeconomic romantic barrier (between the wife of a wealthy merchant and an employee) slowly dissolves even in the face of institutionalized execution for adultery. Once again, the Director spins a tale where the male protagonist's happiness is derived from a woman's sacrifice and the emphasis (from personal experience?) is on the attraction that some "strong" women have for "weak," impoverished men with close to zero prospects. While this is not a morality photo-play, Mizoguchi stresses (perhaps to the extreme?) that adultery (real or imagined) was a big deal in Japan's Pre-modern Social System. Adultery laws were a bit tricky though. Husbands could have (were expected to have?) unmarried female lovers. Wives who took on male lovers (married or single) were deemed to have committed adultery. Both lovers faced execution for their actions. "Proof" of adultery could be based on heresy, gossip or other circumstantial evidence (and motivated by business jealousy or revenge). The husband and families of adulterers could be thrown in jail and have their assets confiscated. Even villages the adulterers came from could be punished! (It would seem that same-sex adulterous relationships were not legally addressed, since, apparently, they were assumed never to occur!) Criterion's restoration is outstanding! Cinematography is very good (often due to the camera subtly "floating" on a crane. Subtitles are a bit long and often fail to fully capture the Kensai-Ben flavor of line deliveries. Music uses only Japanese instruments. While this may be commendable, performances are uneven with percussion used more to provide irritating acoustic-shocks than to enhance scene richness. Recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

This is adapted from a work by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, one of the defining writers from the early Tokugawa era. His name often reaches us in the contours of a Japanese Shakespeare and as usually with these Western imports to explain Eastern art, it is mostly a lazy comparison. Unlike Shakespeare who continues to inspire a steady flow of film, Chikamatsu's name has been largely neglected however; there is this, and films by Uchida, Shinoda, and Yasuzo Masumura, 'shunji'/double-suicide stories that were Chikamatsu's forte, each enlivened in its own way by the intensity of vibrant artifice and a story of forbidden passions cleansed by death.So film-wise, the heart of these things has been extrapolated from where centuries of concentrated practice refined them, in the stages of kabuki or bunraku, both of which featured elaborate contraptions for generating illusions. The stage having been set, it was all a matter of achieving a cinematic mobility around it. Shinoda made the most clever simple use of that stage in Double Suicide; he was essentially filming what domestic audiences had enjoyed for centuries on the stage of bunraku as part of unbroken tradition, but trusting our eye to be naturally dislocated the right distance to absorb this as a puzzling modernity. It is not unlike what has happened with Mizoguchi; a visual purity from tradition dislocated, thus obscured, through Western interpretations.But let's backtrack a little. We know that Chikamatsu abandoned kabuki for the puppet theater of bunraku, an author's theater, with pliable actors held on strings and the gods that move the world made visible. There he worked in favour of better integrated audience manipulation, in favour of an idealized realism sprung from the author's mind.So here we have a film about a scroll-maker, himself an artist charged with cultivating idealized images, fighting against the idealized reality he has helped cultivate in a quest for the true love he had all his life sublimated into perfect service.It is very similar to Oharu in this way; the film structured around the tension that rises from characters performing idealized roles and the tortured heart that gives rise to them. There is a master printer who cultivates the image of the noble benefactor but who is a cruel deceiving scumbag. Nobles who act magnanimous in the open but then use their position to barter for money. The rival printer who feigns congratulations or compassion but who is secretly plotting for the imperial position.So this idealized world that Chikamatsu advocated and in a small part helped cultivate, Mizoguchi posits to be a system of organized oppression with victims its own characters.But it is in thrusting through this world of idealized, thus largely fictional appearances, that the two lovers can finally realize feelings that were socially prohibited. In this fictional world true beauty, a love fou, is realized by shedding the artificial. As it turns out, the two of them become the couple they were groomed to be.As usual with Mizoguchi, the narrative on the surface level is never less than obvious. It is clean, disarmingly earnest. It seems like the film does not demand anything of us. But beneath the controlled histrionics, there is a heart of images that beats with abstract beauty.The final image is of the two lovers publicly declaring love by simply standing together. It is again clean but resonates outsid the narrative. Their fate is sealed, but the image no longer cultivated but naturally arisen now has the chance to blossom across the audience of curious onlookers. It is an image with the power to inspire change.Mizoguchi is not a filmmaker I can deem personal. But he's a remarkable study just the same.

This film was near the end of a wonderful sequence of films made near the end of his life by Mizoguchi. As Tony Raines says in the DVD extra for the Masters of Cinema edition this was a studio project that he was not wholly enthusiastic about. This shows a little in the film as it lacks some of the real flair and emotional power of some of his earlier great films. However, it shares with them his wonderful flowing camera and great cinematography. Its also a terrific story, based originally on a story from the great Japanese 17th Century playwright Monzaemon Chikamatsu (hence the Japanese name, A Tale from Chikamatsu). The screenplay is skillfully worked from the original story, which depends a lot of some pretty unlikely coincidences.The film has a great cast, although the lead actor (and major star at the time) Kazuo Hazegawa is a little old for the role of the shy lover. Kyoko Kagawa is great as the wife of a powerful merchant who is mistakenly accused of having an affair with her servant, but then falls in love with him as they both go on the run. As you'd expect from a Mizoguchi film, technically it is flawless, with lovely sets and some beautiful camera work. The Masters of Cinema version on DVD is a beautiful restoration. For Mizoguchi fans, this film is well worth getting, but for those who haven't seen many of his films it would be better to start with some of his earlier masterpieces.