Aien kyo (1937)
Directed by
Kenji Mizoguchi
Also Known As:
The Straits of Love and Hate
Runtime: 89 min
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subs: English / Chinese
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono
Codec: XVID, 1000kbps, MP3, 80kbps
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028558/
Sensesofcinema: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/ ... guchi.html
Brightlightsfilm: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/22/mizoguchi.html
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The most complex film of this period is perhaps the least known: The Straits of Love and Hate (1937), loosely inspired by Tolstoy's much-filmed Resurrection, which had been one of the staples of Japanese film adaptation in the silent era. Here the balance between distance and involvement is perfectly achieved – one sympathises profoundly with the ill-treated heroine while remaining aware of the social conditions which create her plight. In fact, of all Mizoguchi's prewar films, this is the most positive in its feminism: his heroine is not doomed, but permitted to rebel successfully against the cruel patriarch who seeks to separate her from her child. By comparison the rather better known Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939), for all its staggering formal beauty, is a little monotonous emotionally. Another story of a woman who sacrifices herself so that the man she loves – a kabuki actor – can achieve professional fulfillment, it is as affecting as any film Mizoguchi made, but the emotional complexities which give The Straits of Love and Hate, Five Women Around Utamaro (1946) or A Woman of Rumour (1954), amongst others, their enduring fascination, are less visible. Mizoguchi compensates with one of his most astonishing exercises in mise-en-scène: a stylistic mastery which is admittedly a little less closely bound up with the experiences and feelings of his characters than was generally the case in his work. Even so, his style in this film, confining actors to a single plane within an expansive screen space, using repeated sound effects as leitmotifs, is unique in the cinema of its period, and confirms Mizoguchi as one of the great avant-garde directors.
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Mizoguchi, the sensitive leftist and "woman's director," was also a perfectionist and a tyrant on the set. One story, perhaps apocryphal, says that for the film The Straits of Love and Hate (1938) he forced actor Fumiko Yamaji to rehearse a scene seven hundred times. Kinuyo Tanaka, Mizoguchi's favorite actress and one of the screen's greatest, recalled without rancor the director forcing her to read practically an entire library to prepare for a role. Authenticity was one of his fetishes, and his period films were particularly appreciated by Japanese audiences for their historical detail.
Inspired by Tolstoy's novel Resurrection, yet bearing the visual imprint of Josef von Sternberg's 1928 film The Docks of New York, this is a typically sympathetic study of a woman in extremis from master director Kenji Mizoguchi. However, Fumiko Yamaji, who plays the servant who is impregnated by an innkeeper's feckless son and who runs away to join a band of second-rate strolling players, must have felt oppressed herself, as Mizoguchi reportedly made her rehearse one scene 700 times. Yet, the stress was apparently worthwhile, as there is touching resignation in her decision to foreswear romance and settle for the minor consolations of life on the road. Interestingly, the director was apparently not keen to make this film.
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Subs: English / Spanish
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