Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi. 1954, 102 mins. 16mm print from the Japan Foundation. With Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa. Apprentice scrollmaker Mohei attempts to help his master’s wife out of a delicate financial situation, and as a result the two end up on the lam together. Thrown together by persecuting forces, they become lovers during a delicate idyll that shows Mizoguchi at the height of his pictorial powers. But such exquisite feelings are doomed to be punished by society. Based on a 300-year-old play by the famed dramatist Chikamatsu, this watershed work of postwar jidaigeki is one of Mizoguchi’s most beloved films in Japan, with Akira Kurosawa foremost among its admirers.

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