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Known under various other titles such as A Story from Chikamatsu and The Tale of the Crucified Lovers, Chikamatsu Monogatari was made in 1954 in just 29 days, an exceptionally short time for the painstaking Mizoguchi. Chikamatsu was an 18th century puppet-play writer of great renown, regarded by some as a Japanese Shakespeare. His plays were written and set in feudal times when women were hugely oppressed, adultery (particularly when it crossed class lines) could be punished by crucifixion, and suicide was widely seen as a happy release from life’s problems. These were just the kind of themes to appeal to Mizoguchi, the most passionately feminist, along with Carl Dreyer, of all film directors. This particular story tells of a high-born young woman, Osan, unhappily married to a much older man who owns a calendar-making business. In a somewhat complex and occasionally farcical chain of events involving an employee, Mohei, who secretly loves Osan, another employee who loves Mohei and is consumed with jealousy, Osan’s worthless brother, and some court nobles trying to avoid paying their debts to Osan’s husband, Osan and Mohei are unable to avoid the tragic destiny foreshadowed in the Crucified Lovers title variant. Mizoguchi’s visual style is, as always, stunning. The master of the “long take”, he always tries to avoid cutting within scenes, relying instead on deep focus photography (by the great Kazuo Miyagawa) and diagonals cutting across the screen which invariably hint at a world beyond the frame, such as the constant eavesdropping which contributes to the lovers’ downfall. The (almost) constantly moving camera creates the impression of a scroll being slowly unrolled to reveal a story, a technique long perfected by this director. As in Ugetsu Monogatari there is a magnificent scene on a lake where, with the camera stationary for several minutes (unusual for Mizoguchi), the boat carrying Osan and Mohei drifts into view, and their proposed suicide mission is suddenly abandoned by the realisation of their mutual love. I cannot fault the acting. Osan is played by Kyoko Kagawa, a popular Japanese actress of the time, familiar to many as the sister in Mizoguchi’s Sansho Dayu, the youngest daughter in Ozu’s Tokyo Story, and the wife in Kurosawa’s High and Low. Mohei is played by Kazuo Hasegawa, whom I do not recall seeing before, and Osan’s father by Eitaro Shindo, who plays the title role in Sansho Dayu. Chikamatsu Monogatari
was the last of Mizoguchi’s truly great films. For me it does not
quite match the Shakespearian magnificence of Sansho Dayu, but it
is the equal of the spectacularly beautiful Ugetsu Monogatari, whose two
intertwined stories do not quite gel together, and of the heartrending
Story of the Last Chrysanthemums made many years earlier.
All lovers of Mizoguchi’s films should see it if they can.
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