Watching this film, it seemed to me almost impossible to say anything about it without meditating on its year(s) of release- 1941-42.
One expects a Mizoguchi film to look beautiful, but what struck me most was the way the camera traversed the elaborate sets. I've seen a couple of Mizoguchi's movies from the '30s and while they are handsome, I do not remember the elaborate tracking shots featured in this film. Jean Renoir had integrated complex camera movement into sound films in the '30s, and surely Mizoguchi was familiar with those works. But what Mizoguchi does here that seems so unique for the early '40s is the angles in which the camera travels- extreme high and low angles that expose ceilings and floors and which form layers of divided space between elaborate sets of courtyards and rooms. One associates such innovations with Citizen Kane which was released, and presumably shot, concurrently with this film. Mizoguchi developed these techniques independently, without any influence from Wells, the history-book "innovator."
On a more sociological level, one must remember that this, Mizoguchi's only film that could be described as a "samurai flick", was produced and released as Japan was embarking on the imperialist adventures of World War II. Admittedly, it is no average entry into the genre. Instead of the ballets of sword-play and violence that one associates with samurai films, Mizoguchi focuses on the emotional repercussions of feudal law and discipline on different layers of Japanese society. Still, the revenge driven collective title-protagonist's self-destructive determination is clearly presented as heroically manly. Was even Mizoguchi the humanist caught up in the wave of nationalistic chauvinism then sweeping Japan? Is the film truly a call for the country's men to readily sacrifice their lives for the bloody glory of the nation? There are scenes that would seem to support such a reading, such as a rather embarrassing one in which the warriors tell themselves they mustn't act like lowly Chinese and instead adhere to the "samurai way." Clearly, this is the way the fascist authorities of the time understood the film.
Yet, I could not wonder if Mizoguchi did not intend the film to subtly present a society defined by futile machismo, in which an unjust death sentence is avenged only so the avengers can go happily to the gallows, accepting their own absurd destruction because to do so is the samurai way.
One expects a Mizoguchi film to look beautiful, but what struck me most was the way the camera traversed the elaborate sets. I've seen a couple of Mizoguchi's movies from the '30s and while they are handsome, I do not remember the elaborate tracking shots featured in this film. Jean Renoir had integrated complex camera movement into sound films in the '30s, and surely Mizoguchi was familiar with those works. But what Mizoguchi does here that seems so unique for the early '40s is the angles in which the camera travels- extreme high and low angles that expose ceilings and floors and which form layers of divided space between elaborate sets of courtyards and rooms. One associates such innovations with Citizen Kane which was released, and presumably shot, concurrently with this film. Mizoguchi developed these techniques independently, without any influence from Wells, the history-book "innovator."
On a more sociological level, one must remember that this, Mizoguchi's only film that could be described as a "samurai flick", was produced and released as Japan was embarking on the imperialist adventures of World War II. Admittedly, it is no average entry into the genre. Instead of the ballets of sword-play and violence that one associates with samurai films, Mizoguchi focuses on the emotional repercussions of feudal law and discipline on different layers of Japanese society. Still, the revenge driven collective title-protagonist's self-destructive determination is clearly presented as heroically manly. Was even Mizoguchi the humanist caught up in the wave of nationalistic chauvinism then sweeping Japan? Is the film truly a call for the country's men to readily sacrifice their lives for the bloody glory of the nation? There are scenes that would seem to support such a reading, such as a rather embarrassing one in which the warriors tell themselves they mustn't act like lowly Chinese and instead adhere to the "samurai way." Clearly, this is the way the fascist authorities of the time understood the film.
Yet, I could not wonder if Mizoguchi did not intend the film to subtly present a society defined by futile machismo, in which an unjust death sentence is avenged only so the avengers can go happily to the gallows, accepting their own absurd destruction because to do so is the samurai way.