| Details | View the trailer One of a string of late-career masterworks made by Kenji Mizoguchi in the early 1950s, A Story from Chikamatsu is an exquisitely moving tale of forbidden love struggling to survive in the face of persecution. Based on a classic of eighteenth-century Japanese drama, the film traces the injustices that befall the wife of a Kyoto scroll maker and his apprentice after each is unfairly accused of wrongdoing. Bound by fate in an illicit, star-crossed romance, they go on the run in search of refuge from the punishment prescribed them: death. Shot in a gorgeous, painterly style by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this subtly sensuous indictment of societal oppression was heralded by Akira Kurosawa as a “great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.” Description courtesy of Janus Films. (Dir.: Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1954, 102 min., DCP, b&w, Japanese with English subtitles) |
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