I liked Ugetsu so much that I decided to check out some other films by Kenji Mizoguchi. I was lucky enough to find that the Eclipse series has a box set of them called Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women with several of his most important films. So I started 20 years before Ugetsu with Osaka Elegy.
The blurbs said that Osaka Elegy is the beginning of Mizoguchi’s strongest films, and its ending alone would qualify it as such. After all the hardship, misunderstanding, and social ostracism that the heroine has encountered, the film ends with her standing on a bridge looking out at the water with refuse floating in it. She asks a doctor she knows why she’s bad, and the doctor says no one could say. Since she’d lost everything by then – family, respect, fiancé, job – I expected a discrete plunge. Instead, Ayako looks DIRECTLY at the camera and marches straight for the viewer. WOW! This woman is not going to be cowed by hypocrites in family or society. It is an amazing ending to a film.
The theme here is familiar after Ugetsu, though Osaka Elegy predates the Ugetsu by 17 years. Ineffective men in her life force Ayako into ruin in the same way the two men in Ugetsu set the stage for the downfall of their wives. Here, however, Ayako quickly learns that she has to be strong and not only cope but also thrive in her male-created situation. She gives up her first patron after his wife catches them, hoodwinks her second paramour, and moves on after her fiancé betrays her. After her family rejects her despite all she’s done to help the men resolve their financial problems, she strikes out on her own. This woman is far more powerful than those in Ugetsu, and again, I found myself thinking of the the silent era and its strong women like Lulu in Pandora’s Box.
That shouldn’t be a surprise since Mizoguchi made Osaka Elegy only nine years after The Jazz Singer brought in sound and its attendant effect on film. Osaka Elegy is far more like a silent movie than Ugetsu is. We still have the long takes that are a Mizoguchi hallmark, but the camera hardly moves at all here, unlike its glide and sweep in the later film. The long takes with the static camera create a theatrical effect in scenes like the early dinner at Ayako’s house, the complicated exchange in theater hall, and the bed scene with Ayako and wife of her lover. Later Mizoguchi will keep the long takes but move the camera more.
Like in Ugetsu, though, Mizoguchi uses his still photography eye here. Osaka Elegy is filled with beautiful images of Deco Japan like the interior of the department store and the exterior of the apartment building. And the hugely long scene of the puppet performance, fascinating in itself even without the double-entendre of the theatrical story vis-a-vis the movie narrative. And the great opening shot of the company owner’s wife asleep in her bed, her head beside that of her dog. If I can see Mizoguchi’s love of image this early, I can predict that I’ll see it in his other films.
The last similarity between later Mizoguchi and Osaka Elegy is his use of melodrama. The poor Ayako does her duty as a daughter and family member, but things continually work out to her detriment every time she tries, generally thanks to a string of bad luck you’d only find in melodrama. A happenstance arrival of the wife. The doctor going to the wrong address. And there is sad irony, too, in scenes such as the one where Ayako’s boyfriend finally proposes….after she’s chosen the life of a concubine. There’s one O’Henry touch after another in this film.
Overall, this is a lesser film than Ugetsu. It has great visuals, but the static camera bogs the film down, and the invariably predictable story doesn’t create much suspense. Osaka Elegy is certainly a good film, but its best elements mostly predict what Mizoguchi will do so much better in the future.
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