Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi. 1951, 95 mins. 35mm print from the Japan Foundation. With Kinuyo Tanaka, Nobuko Otowa, Yuji Hori. Wealthy bachelor Shinnosuke is set to marry Shizu—but instead he falls in love with her young widowed sister, Oyu. The three make an arrangement, based on mutual understanding, that satisfies society’s demand of propriety, but their pact proves all too vulnerable. Based on a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki, Lady Oyu contains astonishing long-take sequence shots which signify a landmark event in Mizoguchi’s career—this was his first teaming with the great cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, a collaboration which would define Mizoguchi’s late films.

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