Mizoguchi made quite a few movies in his life. The only other one I’ve seen is “Sansho the Bailiff” which was made a year after our film. It is a good film, but is rather rambling and doesn’t have quite the impact of the tightly focused and integrated “Ugetsu”. For at least a few years when he was younger, he moved in leftist circles and made at least one movie that offended the authorities. He is known for movies that focus on women and their suffering. On the other hand, at least in his latter years, he seemed to support traditional gender roles and, for instance, didn’t want women as filmmakers.
If you wanted to draw some broader conclusions from our movie, one would be that Mizoguchi is showing that women suffer worse in war. But do you think he draws our attention to the role the structure of society plays in this? I suspect that in his other films he generally doesn’t, but I would very much like to see more of them and find out.
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Yeah, I sort of had the sense that his appreciation of women only went so far and was mainly of an aesthetic nature. One of those "male feminists" who like to contemplate women's role in society and their suffering and all that, but doesn't necessarily want to empower them in any significant way, such as by letting them make their own films. He probably had a bit of the control freak about him, like his character Genjuro — he apreciates his wife, but he HAS to be the boss.
I don't know how deep his social criticism is in Ugetsu. I mean, it's remarkable that he focuses on the women and the fact that they are right and that they suffer at the hands of brutish and foolish men. But one could argue that everything he portrays about women is pretty much on the surface, meaning the reality of their lives is there for all to see; it's just a matter of having the honesty to acknowledge it. It requires no deep digging — just a lot of forthrightness, which is no small thing, considering a lot of men, even to this day, are in denial about the history and results of male privilege.
Regarding the wartime experiences of women, it has always been the case that men use the excuse of war, the chaos of war, to victimize women (from the earliest times to today — the Janjaweed in Darfur, the Serbs in Kosovo, and less systematicaly, the Americans in Vietnam and Iraq). They justify it their own minds as right punishment for the enemy or as their right reward for risking their lives in battle. Think of the "comfort women" of World War II Japan. Think of the horrific rape of Nanking, where thousands and thousands of Chinese women were brutalized and tortured by the Japanese.
In Ugetsu, we hear several times, "watch out for your women," as though it's a given that any unattended woman will be raped. That's just what men do in wartime. ... I couldn't quite figure out whether Mizoguchi was mirroring this horrific men-will-be-men resignation in his film, or whether he was offering a more meaningful and judgmental look at the phenomenon. I tend to think he was doing the latter, because he clearly went to great lengths to show how foolish and wrong BOTH men were and how their lives — and the world — would be a much better place if they had listened to the voice of reason emanating from the women.
I wonder how much of the social criticism in the film was actually just a filmmaker with a keen eye for reflecting reality. I think he did a very good job of showing what people are like in certain situations -- but perhaps he didn't mean to comment on it, we just see the importance that we want to see in it.
That's basically what I was getting at in my first comment, Ben, but I think he certainly went beyond "reflecting reality." He actively shaped the story, a work of fiction. He "edited" the action to fit his purposes, to tell the story he wanted to tell. That, to me, is definitely "commenting," though people might disagree on the substance of the commentary.
I think kc is on the right track. Mizoguchi doesn’t show any signs in this movie of being expository or of pushing an overt commentary. But he is a master of visual detail and there is a lot packed into the mise-en-scene. What kc noticed about the significance of having Tobei’s wife Ohama pilot the boat was a very good example.
I agree that Mizoguchi was trying to make a point. As kc said, both men were foolish and wrong and were reminded repeatedly of that by their sensible wives. The wives were essentially helpless, though. It seemed like Mizoguchi's message was that men should do better by their wives, not that the wives should be in charge of their own lives.
It seemed like Mizoguchi's message was that men should do better by their wives, not that the wives should be in charge of their own lives.
Oh, excellent distinction, Erin.
I thought there was a parallel commentary going throughout the film about money's corrupting influence. The filmmaker takes time to portray Genjuro as a happy and even-keel fellow before market success warps his priorities. He wanted to be a rich man and ignored his wife's pleas that they had enough. He made a striking remark when first visiting ghost manor about his wares, that you could see an object's qualities once it was in the proper setting. Or all that glitters is gold.
Indeed, cl, greed was an important theme.
If we combine Erin’s and cl’s comments, maybe we should see Mizoguchi as a conservative, not in the contemporary American sense but in kind of a Burkean sense that there is a natural order to society that is best. Two of the responsibilities of men are to do right by their families by being proper providers, and to fulfill the station in life that fate has assigned them and not egotistically strive beyond their due.
Seen this way, part of the horror of war is that it tears up the good fabric of society creating not only voids filled with marauding bands of fighters but also smaller holes that get infected with vanity.
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