Drama
Japanese (西鶴一代女)
1952 · Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi · 136 min
In seventeenth-century Japan, a young woman of good family loses her place in society and is passed from one household and trade to the next. Kenji Mizoguchi follows her across decades in a slow, formally precise drama of status, money and the limited choices open to women.
Why it matters in cinema history
A central work of the Japanese golden age of the 1950s, and the clearest statement of Mizoguchi's lifelong subject: women crushed by systems of class, marriage and money.
Watch with intention
Watch how the camera's distance from Oharu shapes your sympathy: the film asks you to see her circumstances as clearly as her feelings.
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