5pm
Street of Shame
(Akasen Chitai, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 85 min., 1956)
“The best of all films examining the problems of women in postwar Japan ” - Donald Richie, this overwhelming work was Mizoguchi's last. The “street of shame” runs through Tokyo 's red-light district where the women at the Dreamland salon eke out a living for their families. Mizoguchi's portrait of this group of prostitutes, from a hard-boiled glamour girl to a widow in her forties worried about her fading beauty–was so powerful in its indictment of women's oppression that, a year after its release, it led to a government bill outlawing prostitution. An ensemble of Japan 's finest actresses brings dense emotional life to this unforgettable group portrait.
7pm
Ugetsu
(Ugetsu Monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 97 min., 1953)
In a sixteenth-century village, a potter is seduced by an exquisitely beautiful woman who turns out to be a phantom. Mizoguchi's rigorous compositions and camerawork, his use of the mist-enshrouded landscape around Lake Biwa, the intense performances of two of Japan's greatest actresses (Kyo and Tanaka), and the theme of the illusory nature of human ambition and desire: all contribute to a work of infinite beauty and significance. “Simultaneously realistic, allegorical and supernatural, Ugetsu is the most stylistically perfect of all Mizoguchi's work…” - David L. Cook.
9pm
Life of Oharu
(Saikaku Ichidai Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 144 min, 1952)
Mizoguchi considered Life of Oharu to be his masterpiece. No film rivals Oharu's exquisite sense of composition, and the implacability of its chronicle of the downfall of a woman. Kinuyo Tanaka, whose career was synonymous with Mizoguchi's for many years, plays Oharu, an imperious court lady of the Edo period who lives in Kyoto . When she is sold to a feudal lord, she is subjected to a series of humiliations and ends up as a broken old streetwalker. “[A]n extremely elegant movie whichever way you look at it: tiny details of movement by the actors, beautiful compositions and photography throughout, single fluid takes often serving to state a whole scene.” - TIME OUT
