Mizoguchi at Lyon and 'Sight and Sound'

[Alexander Jacoby]

Thanks Roger for mentioning my piece (and good to hear Mark's Forest of Pressure is getting some of the acclaim it deserves too). Ironically given the context of your post, the original draft of my article had rather more about Mizo's late forties work and particularly about the way that these films, made during the Occupation, emphasise the influence of Western ideologies and art forms on Japan (particularly true of My Love Has Been Burning and Actress Sumako, set during the Meiji Period). The draft had to be trimmed and since the piece was emerging in the context of the MofC DVD releases, the fifties films had to take priority.
   
  I'd be interested in list members' relative valuations of the Occupation era Mizoguchi films (including the bourgeois melodramas of the early fifties). It seems to be generally agreed that Utamaro and My Love Has Been Burning are the best, and I think I include myself in that agreement... but seeing Actress Sumako again recently, I was struck by how good that was too. Miss Oyu seems to me the most complex of the three early fities melodramas, but I also think Portrait of Madame Yuki is a tremendously underrated film.
   
  ALEX
   

       
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