★★★★★A friend and I got some sushi and saki and settled in to watch Ugetsu, thinking of fall, Halloween and ghosts. Sort of missed that target, but it's a great film with many surprises. It seems almost retro for a 1953 film, and I kept thinking of silent films while I was watching it.
People talk about Kenji Mizoguchi’s long takes and his camera work, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the cinematography so outstanding. But I was. Mizoguchi’s camera doesn’t blink; when Genjuro and Miyagi are stoking the kiln, the camera just runs and runs, following the two as they move from interacting with each other to working on the kiln and back again. A scene like this would have been cut into several pieces by most contemporary directors, but here, the camera moves along with the characters or draws back for a wider view, and we see the entire action in all its specificity. I found a certain satisfaction in seeing the completeness of the action, and the continual use of this style through the length of Ugetsu creates a rhythm that seems leisurely and intimate even as the story rips from one episode to another. One of the more lyrical takes of the film is the scene of Genjuro’s arrival at Lady Waksa’s home. Here, the camera starts with a stable distance shot and moves in as Genjuro goes from one part of the villa to another, always framing the image to follow Genjuro as though he were walking through a series of well-composed still shots. There is bonus beauty here between the advance of the narrative, the beauty of the image, and lyricism of the camera movement. This is what I like so much about Ugetsu – the simultaneous levels of beauty in so many shots.
And there are moments of beauty the film that seem more about visual impression than narrative push. Genjuro’s extended arrival at the villa falls into this category, as do some of the scenes of Genjuro and Lady Wakasa cavorting. And the eerie beauty of the families crossing the lake as the boatwoman sings isn’t necessary to the story; Genjuro and Tobei could have left their wives and set out on the trip alone like they did the first time, but Ugetsu would not have had one of its most eerie, beautiful moments.
This same scene brings to mind another of my pleasures in the film, my being uncertain of the reality of what I was watching. Because of the stylized camera and décor, there were many moments of pleasure as I tried to choose between reality and subjectivity. As a boat emerges from the mist during the crossing, we don’t know what to think until the injured man in it explains that he isn’t a ghost and grounds the viewer’s uncertainty into a realistic framework. Later, Genjuro sees his wife looking at the kimonos he is thinking of buying, but we quickly realize that’s an illusion. And into this visual uncertainty walks the imposing Lady Wakasa. A big part of the rest of the film trembles on the edge of real and unreal, a great experience of pleasure, until reality is re-confirmed….almost. And what great ghosts Medieval Japanese noblewomen make, with their delicate, mannered, artificial movements and over-the-top dress.
The tone and theme of the movie also remind me of silent cinema. The slightly overstated aspect of Lady Wakasa recall Murnau’s Dracula to me, and each of these supernatural beings interacts with a real, human counterpart. There’s also a strong element of silent melodrama Ugetsu. There’s the rape of Ohama and her fall into prostitution, her encounter with Tobei and their reconciliation, the old woman who aids Miyagi with food for her son and the subsequent attack on the mother and child by the soldiers. These are only a few of the melodramatic elements of the film that recall the artificiality of silents.Even the principle theme of the movie feels affected by the 20s suffrage movement more than by the gender roles of the 50s. Ohama’s rape is a direct result of Tobei’s obsession with becoming a samurai, and in case you don’t catch that, the film repeats it several times. Likewise, Miyagi ‘s fate proceeds from Genjuro’s single-minded determination to make more money, and we have a village chief to tell us that, too. Ugetsu shows that men do real harm to women’s lives, to the lives of women they love, by not considering the women when they make decisions. I find this a remarkably progressive theme to build a Japanese movie around in 1953.
Ugetsu ends with a showstopper that unites the elements of Mizoguchi’s style, the titillating balance of real/unreal, the melodrama and the theme into one scene. It is a concluding masterstroke, and one that makes me wonder if the Jerry Zucker didn’t have this in mind when he put together that famous scene with Demi Moore and Patrick Swazye in Ghost.
