Word: ugetsu
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Rashomon, 3:35, 6:40, 9:45, Ugetsu...
...MEDIEVAL peasants who are the heroes of Ugetsu (1953) don't have to be complicated to become tragic figures. Like Mizoguchi's other characters, they are creatures of emotion. Love-relationships and family ties move their lives, and the extraordinary personal loss that ends Ugetsu only increases the dominance of such deep relationships over the selfish emotions...
Long-take is only a convenient means to this unity, as we see in those sequences in Ugetsu that are composed of several shots. Scenes like Genjuro's flight from Lady Wakasa's mansion build emotionally the same way as single-shot sequences: namely, by setting a certain compositional order and then letting the scene's dramatic progress push it into new shapes-and then cutting to another shot that maintains the relationships connecting the characters...
...spoofing movie-making, Mr. Mekas lards the film with many little parodies of other movies, some of them recognizable (one of Ugetsu, for instance), most of them not. Good parody can be broad, but it musn't be rubbed in; why does Mr. Mekas choose to have Japanese characters appear on the screen in the Ugetsu scene and Cyrllic subtitles flash on during a sleigh ride when the music in both cases makes the jokes perfectly well? Mr. Mekas' other comedy technique is the avoidance of all logical transition between events in the film. I should say that a number...
Daiei, a serious company that also made Gate of Hell, Ugetsu, and Rashomon, is trying to do something more than ring the box-office gong. Scores of Buddhist monks and scholars have been hired to guide Director Kenji Misumi through the life of the young Indian prince who, in the 6th century B.C., turned away from worldly pleasure to seek enlightenment of the soul. The advisers are trying to keep the sex in balance with the substance, the taste with the tasty; and Buddha himself -played by 23-year-old Rising Son Kojiro Hongo-will only appear in the flesh...