The other movie that I managed to watch yesterday during the general madness of the day was Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu. It is drawn from two ghost stories, "The House in the Thicket" and "The Lust of the White Serpent," from Ueda Akinari's 18th century Tales of Moonlight and Rain - with a little of Guy de Maupassant's "How He Got the Legion of Honor" thrown in. As with all Mizoguchi there's a lot more going on, including a critique of the growing greed of the post-war Japanese population and the general mistreatment of women. I have a feeling that a Kenji Mizoguchi deep dive is starting. In 1941 he had made a pro-war propaganda film, The 47 Ronin (which is happily also in the Criterion Channel collection), and Ugetsu is also a commentary on the folly of war and militarism, which means the film is also in some ways a statement of regret. Highly recommended.
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