User Reviews

Ayako (Isuzu Yamada) becomes the mistress of her boss, Mr. Asai, so she can pay her father's debt, and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement. She also sends money to her brother Hiroshi to pay his university tuition, but her father intercepts it.

Mizoguchi considered the film his first serious effort as a director, and while I am not familiar with his earlier work, I have to say this is the kind of film that leaves a mark. Either Mizoguchi or his cinematographer had an excellent awareness of the camera -- the door closing to block the camera early on in the film -- years ahead of its time.

The subject matter in general is impressive. I am not sure what the typical morality was in pre-war Japan, but to feature adultery and whatnot in the 1930s seems quite bold.

There are so many interesting things going on in this film, and several of them surprised me. I loved Ayake (played by Isuzu Yamada) and the voices of the women in general. I couldn't help but contrast Ayake's headstrong will and fierceness to Yasujiro Ozu's Noriko in Tokyo Story (played by Setsuko Hara). Noriko was the perfect picture of traditional grace and dedication in a Japanese woman and she fit in perfectly with Ozu's straight lines and symmetrical framing. Ayake, on the other hand, is shadowed by an almost conspiratorial camera which cleverly spies on the fore and background simultaneously, and creeps behind walls and curtains to follow the characters and listen in on their conversations, amplifying the sense of daring and defiance of Ayake's character. The inventiveness of so many varying shots stole my attention more than anything else, though I also appreciated the quick and steady pacing of the story as it unfolded, predominantly led by Ayake.

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This film begins with a relatively wealthy--but extremely grouchy--old man by the name of "Sonosuke Asai" (Benkei Shiganoya) harping on all those around him for very minor issues. It's during this time that his wife "Sumiko" (Yôko Umemura) sarcastically recommends that he gets himself a young mistress since he no longer finds her appealing. That being said, it just so happens that there is a young employee at his office named "Ayako Murai" (Isuzu Yamada) that he finds quite attractive and knowing that she is in desperate need of money due to a family matter offers her the unenviable position. In any case, faced with very little choice she reluctantly accepts his offer. Unfortunately, even though she tries to do what is best for her family, she soon discovers that she has lost the respect of everyone of any consequence to her. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I initially thought that this was a comedy as the first few scenes seemed rather light-hearted. But things change rather remarkably later on. On another note, it should be mentioned that silent films lasted a bit longer in Japan than most other industrialized nations and that this was one of the first pictures to utilize sound. Be that as it may, I thought that this was a pretty good movie and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

It was this film alone that drove me into an intense obsession with cinema. Mizoguchi is the great Japanese master, and Osaka Elegy reveals his genius. From his long take compositions that are taxed with complexity and tension, to his ambigious depictions of character, I felt like I had grown after I had seen this film. Notice the national allegory at the film's conclusion, a confused and lonely Japan. And his inconclusive final shot taken many years before the well known 400 Blows. The devastating melodrama is not undercut by any cinematic manipulation. I highly recommend this to any lover of the cinematic medium. Also, I am a sucker for self-reflexive Kabuki theater sequences...

(1936) Osaka Elegy/ Naniwa erejî (In Japanese with English subtitles) DRAMA

Co-written and directed by Kenji Mizoguchi that was made in 1936, this is the Japanese equivalent of The Sin of Madelon Claudet and similar to Stella Dallas released in 1937 in which the centered protagonist who happens to be a female Ayako Murai (Isuzu Yamada) attempts to do a little good surrounded by the self centered and selfish people around her.

One of few examples when the people in Japan was no different than the people in America, as it humanizes or put a face on a mistress or escort difficult situation, she initially did not want to be a part in. And the portrayal of Ayako's father as a self centered drunk who is capable to lie and steal is as authentic as any self-centered drunks of today.

The first film included in the Criterion Collewction's "Mizoguchi's Fallen Women", this is the story of Ayako (a pretty great Isuzu Yamada who, according to this website, is still wonderfully with us), who is a switchboard operator who needs 300 yen to prevent her father getting in major trouble. To get the money, she spends time with her boss. This is, of course, little more than being a companion. One of Mizoguchi's gifts as a director (he also wrote the story) is that in many of his films his characters were not sympathetic yet he does not wholly judge the. The key is, what would you do? The film could never be in color, it is a noirish, gray film. The story is compelling, the acting is uniformly good, with Ms. Yamada really standing out, and the direction is, of course, flawless. I've also seen "Sisters Of The Gion" and "Streets Of Shame" from this collection. Buy it! Mizoguchi was one of the giants of 20th century cinema from any country. This film is highly recommended.

"Osaka Elegy" (Japanese, 1936): Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. This is one of his earliest films. Japan was in the throes of a cultural turmoil. They were busy invading China, and feeling the schizophrenia of traditional vs modern society. This story is about a decent young woman, who, when familial pressure is applied, does anything necessary to pay the bills of a pathetic father, a self-centered brother, and a confused, naïve sister, and, a keep an abusive boss "happy". As we might expect (now), her road darkens as everyone demands more and more, gives back less and less, and shuns her for doing what they suggested and made their advantage. Expect a noir-ish look to the film, with spare traditional home sets and costuming, contrasted with high style business/commercial sets and costuming.

A young woman is forced to become her boss's mistress in order to provide for her ungrateful family. A quietly heart-rending observation of the injustice suffered by working class women in early/mid-20th Century Japan from Kenji Mizoguchi. Patiently constructed, and possessing an unmistakable air of inevitability, it has a damningly low opinion of men. Isuzu Yamada, who was so scheming in Sisters of Gion, Mizoguchi's other similarly themed offering from 1936, gives a poignant performance as a woman whose inherent goodness is evident in spite of the sometimes dishonest things she does. Worth watching.

Osaka Elegy is easily one of the most visually beautiful films I have ever seen. Every frame is perfectly composed and crafted and simply brilliant to look at. But Mizoguchi's style doesn't showboat, instead he favors an understated tone. The clearest way he achieves this is through his characteristic long takes and lack of close-ups. His visuals don't beg to be seen and applauded. They just sit there as calm, elegant masterpieces for the viewer to make of them what they will.

The script, which is tight and feminist, clearly benefits from Mizoguchi's collaboration with Yoshitaka Yoda, someone whose name appears on every Mizoguchi masterpiece.

The film itself places Ayako (Isuzu Yamada) in the unfair reality of patriarchal and capitalistic Japan. Two options lay before her, to either conform to traditional patriarchal values, or to pursue wealth in the new capitalist society. If she fits within patriarchal expectations and supports her father she has no social capital and mobility; two commodities integral in a capitalist society. She, instead, becomes condemned to enabling the lifestyle of her lazy father and naïve brother, while she stagnates in blue-collar work. If she plays by the rules of capitalism she is shunned from society and deemed a vagrant. She gains wealth and social mobility, but is at the sole mercy of the revolting man that put her there, and is ostracized from her family and lover. What results is a world where women are expected to meet two contradictory expectations, to both appeal to men's propriety and their lust. The institutions which enforce this oppressive role, capitalism and patriarchy, symbiotically feed off each other to the detriment of women. Capitalism enables lustful and greedy men to rise to the top while traditional patriarchy makes their ascent socially acceptable. Women, on the other hand, are dehumanized into objects to satiate man's desire, and are enhanced by capitalist modifiers such as make-up and clothing. This role is not challenged due to values of traditional patriarchy. Throughout the movie Ayako struggles in both roles, and the movie ends with no real solution to the dilemma. Inferences can be made about the solution due to Mizoguchi's communist leanings in the 1930s, but the reality is the movie only depicts the problem and does not offer a solution. But that is hardly a negative in a fundamentally individual and character driven film that focuses more on the story of a woman than on larger societal factors.

However, this film is certainly not without its flaws. This was Mizoguchi's first film with sound and it shows. The score is spotted terribly, making a melodramatic and comedic entrance at the end with the first instance of full orchestra. This broke the otherwise down to earth tone and changes the inconclusive and nihilistic ending into comedy. Transitions awkwardly cut off either diegetic music or sound effects and plunge the viewer into silence. For a medium that is equal parts audio and visual, Osaka Elegy ignores half of its obligations.

But the terrible sound can almost be ignored because of what the film looks like. Overall, Osaka Elegy was a brilliant start in Mizoguchi's self-claimed "serious" ouvre that foreshadows masterpieces to come.

I believe the challenge here was to conceive of a film in terms of bunraku - the traditional Japanese puppet theater - and extrapolate from the environment a structure, so one stage where heightened drama unfolds, controlled, with a view of the mechanisms handling the illusion, and then a second stage on the side to supply a rotation of music and voice expressing emotion. This is very well thought out, something to keep in mind when viewing later Mizoguchi where melodrama lacks annotation.

This translates in our film as melodrama about a bold young woman who gambles away on her dignity and reputation because the world around her is desperate for either money or sex, the controlling mechanism is that only the viewer is in possession of all the facts and so is able to read tragic fate in every exchange. This has been noted by some viewers as film noir, because the woman appears to function as a femme fatale, but the Japanese have no affinity for this sort of trope.

So of course, in accordance with bunraku, the woman is a puppeteer but also herself a puppet, a figure on the same stage as the play she enacts, her movements subject to our scrutiny. You will note this in tandem with, and reversing, an earlier Mizoguchi - The Water Magician - about a water artist whose life is merged with the transitory flows she used to control.

This is beautifully rendered in a scene where she is caught with her boss on a night out to watch a bunraku play. She has set a plot in motion, attempting control, an active role, but unpredictable life foils her. The wife demands explanations but seems the most irate for noticing the hairstyle on the girl, signifying a married woman, her role on the stage being supplanted even though it's a loveless marriage and thankless role. Moments before, however, we have seen an excerpt from the play, where inside the artifice, the controlled fiction, it was the suspicious husband accusing the woman of adultery.

This would have an ordinary ironic effect if mapped cleanly to the situation outside the stage, but it doesn't, it's wholly asymmetrical, the tension all in the imbalance of familiar elements framed askew. You have to puzzle about assigning to the players the puppet-master's controls. This is the touch lacking in Ozu's Floating Weeds.

The music is not in the emotional after-effects of storytelling, this too part of the heightened artifice. The music is in the camera, caressing day from night.

An exceptional film in that it redefines that cinematic, to a degree literary, trope, the femme-fatal. In this film we watch from her perspective. Her transgressions seem themselves a kind of victimization. Not only is sexuality the only tool a woman is given to empower herself in society, but her dignity and her sexuality are therefor put in an antagonistic relation to each other. Sexuality and sincerity become mutually exclusive in the world Mizoguchi paints. The cinematography is magnificent. Everyone looks compromised. But the last shot lets us know which victim's compromise cuts the deepest and. A feminist work in the most profound sense.

This is the first collaboration between Mizoguchi and writer Yoshikata Yoda, with the actress Isuzu Yamada in the principal role, as a young telephonist pushed to prostitution to save her ruined family, and then repudiated by them. Mizoguchi begins his impressive mastership with the framing and the perspective and, though still far from his masterpieces, is an interesting milestone for the Mizoguchi admirers.

Osaka Elegy (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Good drama from Kenji Mizoguchi about a young Japanese woman (Isuzu Yamada) who agrees to become the mistress to her boss so that she can get money from him and pay-off her father's debt, which will also keep him from jail. As soon as the woman agrees to the new "terms" she finds her life spiraling out of control. OSAKA ELEGY is certainly a well-made film that contains some very good performances but in the end it was a tad bit too dry for my liking. I think the dryness comes from the fact that we're really not seeing anything overly original in regards to the story as several films, especially in America, were already dealing with this type of subject. I will admit that it's rather interesting seeing the story from a Japanese perspective and especially some of the earliest scenes where we see the difference in social standings. I really liked a few of the earlier scenes where we see the rich men pretty much laughing like villains you'd see in a silent Western. They've got the slimy grin and evil laugh because they know they have the money, which means they have the power. Yamada is certainly wonderful in the lead role as she has quite a bit to do here and pulls off all the emotions without a flaw. I especially liked the scenes where she shows the anger of her trying to do something to help her family but then she still has her ungrateful father coming down on her. The supporting performances were also good but there's no question that the picture belongs to Yamada.