Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Summary: The story chronicles the decline through exile, concubinage and prostitution of Oharu Okui. Her sufferings and treatment are analysed until she is finally discarded like an inanimate object.

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Mizoguchi reckoned The Life of Oharuwas his masterpiece, and who are we to disagree? Certainly it's among his most perfectly structured films, in which anger at the treatment of women in Japanese society is balanced by the director's flawless sense of period, and by expert pacing and visual composition. The story is set in the 17th century, when Japan had settled into a rigidly hierarchical society. Kinuyo Tanaka, in perhaps the finest role of her career, plays Oharu, a highborn woman of the Imperial court. Disgraced when she falls in love with a man of a lower class (Toshiro Mifune, in his only film for Mizoguchi), she's made the mistress of a feudal lord. After bearing him a son she's cast out, and gradually sinks into prostitution and penury. The inevitability of Oharu's fate is tempered by her resilience of spirit--and by the compassion of Mizoguchi's gaze. Although the story is set in the past, he fully intends parallels with modern-day Japan; just after completing the film, he told an interviewer, "Comparing today with [earlier] periods,I don't find much difference: women have always been treated like slaves." The Life of Oharuwas shown at the 1952 Venice Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion. It brought Mizoguchi a belated international fame just four years before his death, and initiated the run of late masterpieces that rounded off his career. --Philip Kemp

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	Japanese
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Mizoguchi Filmography
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1952
Release Date:	April 26, 2004
Runtime:	131 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	A R T 276 D V D
Keywords:	Subtitled, Life, General, Drama, Japanese, Oharu
Genre:	Drama