Kenji Mizoguchi's Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954)

The use of the camera to convey emotional ideas or intelligent feeling is the definition of cinema derived from Mizoguchi's films.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film

Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi made over ninety movies, many during the silent period, and few of them have been seen in the West (are you listening David Kehr at MoMA and Bruce Goldstein at Film Forum?)  What we have seen is exquisite.  Among the few:  Ugetsu (1953), The Life of Oharu (1952) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954).  Turner Classic Movies recently showed Story from Chikamatsu (1954) based on a 17th Century Bunraku (puppet) play.

I mention all the time --probably too often -- that many of today's films look at though D.W. Griffith had never lived (the dubious Arrival and the odious Elle are two examples that I had the misfortune to see recently) and Mizoguchi's film is a nice change, with its influences of Griffith and John Ford and their views of love in a society that does not make it easy for lovers or even women.  Mizoguchi's 17th century lovers have to escape from the oppressive interiors of a master scroll-maker-- Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa) is an assistant and Osan (Kyoko Kagawa) is the master's wife -- to a river where they contemplate suicide and eventually to a bamboo forest, where the tall bamboo seems to be a symbolic prison.  They are eventually caught and crucified, a common punishment for adulterers in 17th century Japan.  Mizoguchi shows an extraordinary concern for the role of women in Japanese society and he and cinematographer Kasuq Miyagawa (who does a wonderful job with rich black-and-white interiors and exteriors) learned from Griffith's subtle use of emotions and Ford's use of space and landscape, though Mizoguchi is more fatalistic than either of those directors, with his particular view of Japanese society, history, and class hierarchy.