Masters of Cinema brings us another value-for-money pairing of Japanese classics, this time headed by Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 masterpiece Ugetsu Monogatari (roughly translated as Tales of the Rain and Moon). Based on a pair of 18th century tales, this ghost story sets the scene for several Japanese horror classics over the next couple of decades – Onibaba, Kwaidan, Kuroneko amongst them, as well as bleak, atmospheric and quietly unsettling films like Harakiri.

In 16th century Japan, civil war is raging but for farmers Genjuru (Mori Masayuki) and Tobei (Ozawa Sakae), the conflict means opportunity. Genjuru is a potter who can sell his wares and Tobei is a wannabe Samurai, who needs money to buy a spear and armour in order to stand a chance of following his dream. While their long-suffering wives Miyagi (Tanaka Kinuyo) and Ohama (Mito Mitsuko) try to bring them down to Earth, the four eventually set out for the city where fate will take them all in different directions. Genjuro is seduced by the ghost of Lady Wakasa (Kyo Machiko) and soon finds himself in a strange marriage to her, while Tobei finds the severed head of a local warlord and, pretending to have killed him, uses it to find position with a local chieftain. Their wives, meanwhile, are left to fend for themselves, which they do in increasingly desperate and tragic ways.

Beautifully shot and dripping with atmosphere, Ugetsu is every bit as good as you would hope it to be. Filmed in long, often static takes, the film nevertheless has a real dynamic fluidity to it, and a palpable sense of tragedy as the two men, blinded by ambition, abandon everything they hold dear.

With some genuinely eerie moments created by both visuals and the understated music score, this is a quietly creepy, powerfully atmospheric movie that remains a masterclass in understated horror.

Also included on this release is Mizoguchi’s 1951 melodrama Oyu-Sama. This is a less impressive production, though still a solid enough effort in its own right. A tale of forbidden and unrequited love, it stars Yuji Hori as Shinnosuke, a young man heading for an arranged marriage in 1930’s Japan – a nation still very much caught between tradition and the modern age. On meeting his potential bride-to-be, he instead immediately falls for her older sister Oyu (Kinuyo Tanaka). A widowed mother, Oyu is forbidden to remarry by society and family tradition, and so Sinnosuke marries the younger Oshizu (Nobuko Otowa), living an unconsummated marriage life with the young woman who has sacrificed her own happiness for that of her sister. What follows is a frustrated three way love triangle where no one can be with the person they want.

It’s an effective, efficient love story, if a somewhat slight one. Tanaka seems a bit too forward for someone constrained by strict rules of etiquette, and never really does anything to make us understand why she would instantly become the object of desire for this young man, but Mizoguchi handles his thin material with skill and creates a degree of erotic tension between the three. It’s certainly the lesser of the two films here, but well worth seeing nonetheless and a welcome addition to the disc.

DAVID FLINT

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