Friday, June 04, 2010

Pomade, Cigarettes, and Sunny Days

Women of the Night (1948)
directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

There is nothing new under the sun, and no fictional testament to the cruelty visited on women by men more violent or difficult to watch than the films of Kenji Mizoguchi. At barely 75 minutes, Women of the Night subjects its heroines to enough abuse, disgrace, and embarrassment to satisfy the most sadistic fan of Japanese poetic realism. So complete is the pain, in fact, that I won’t be queuing up the rest of the Eclipse “Fallen Women” set anytime soon. Ghosts and mile-long tracking shots are one thing, prostitutes beating the daylights out of an associate who wants to escape her rotten, unhappy life quite another. Be kind to the people you love and kind to the people you hate, and remember the thin walls and boulevards of destitute post-war Osaka.