Word: ugetsu
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Street of Shame (Japanese). A study of prostitution in Japan, made by the late Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) in a mood that merges Dickens and documentary...
Street of Shame (Daiei; Harrison), the last picture completed by the late Kenji (Ugetsu) Mizoguchi, perhaps the most gifted of recent Japanese moviemakers, is a Dickensian diatribe against prostitution. At the time the movie was released, Japan had some 500,000 "flowery-willowy" girls, and the picture is said to have swayed millions to support the stop-prostitution bill that was passed in 1956. In the U.S., where prostitution has seldom been seriously discussed on the screen, audiences will no doubt be stunned by the film's unblinking realism. But they will probably not be startled by the scriptwriter...
This luminous little legend, so much like the Western Cinderella story and yet so much more, has been made into a slow (perhaps too slow) and stately motion picture by the same Japanese company that produced Rashomon, Ugetsu and Gate of Hell. The film has the quality of endless resonance that distinguishes the true myth. Like a gong, it is small in itself, but the sound of it carries a very long way. The reverberations of the culminating symbol: the tree of life that bears the fruit of death, a death whose other name is love. For Western movie goers...
Japan's No. 1 cinemactress, dove-necked Machiko Kyo, the rape victim of Rashomon and mincing dispenser of love in Ugetsu, arrived in Manhattan for her first trip outside Japan, was given such a whirl of interviews, screenings, photographic sessions, business appointments and kimono changes (she was equipped with ten sets) that she had little time even for window shopping. At week's end she left for Hollywood to discuss MGM's prize offer: that she play the role of Lotus Blossom opposite Marlon Brando in the film version of Broadway's Teahouse of the August...
...Impostor (Shochiku; Brandon Films). Three Japanese films shown in the U.S. since the war-Rashomon, Ugetsu, Gate of Hell-were made, and made superbly, to win world prestige for the Japanese product. The Impostor was made for the folks back home who have a yen for the movies. The difference is startling. The other three often had the exquisiteness of Hokusai prints brought to life. The Impostor, far more popular at the Japanese ) box office, has the look of a grade A Hollywood costume adventure that was shot with an almond-eyed camera. The story opens in a geisha house...