Kurosawa/Mizoguchi
New 4K Digital Restoration
Thursday, March 23 | 5:30 pm
Saturday, April 1 | 8 pm
Against the wishes of their wives, potter Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) and farmer Tōbei leave their homes to seek their fortunes in the city. Experiencing immediate success, Genjurō commits himself to the ceaseless pursuit of wealth, while Tōbei dreams of becoming a great samurai. The desires of both will lead to their ruin—and to great suffering for their wives. Generally regarded as director Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece—and one of the films, along with Rashomon, that first helped popularize the Japanese cinema in the West—Ugetsu is a jidaigeki (historical drama) ghost story that lyrically blends the real and otherworldly in a series of ethereally beautiful spaces, from the fog-covered lake where the two men encounter a portentous fellow traveler to the mysterious mansion in which Genjurō is seduced by a beautiful noblewoman, played by Rashomon’s Machiko Kyō. Ugetsu, as much as any other film, shows what cinema is capable of as a narrative art form.
Director Kenji Mizoguchi 1953 Japan 97 minutes NR 4K DCP
