Gion no Shimai
Along with Osaka Elegy (released the same year), this devastating portrait of courtesans scraping by in Kyoto’s “pleasure district” marked a turning point in Kenji Mizoguchi’s career. Its story of two geisha sisters—one deferential and loyal, the other defiant and mercenary—lays forth one of the earliest and most forceful expressions of the director’s central thematic concern: the subjugation of women in a callously patriarchal society.
Daiichi Eiga. Producer: Masaichi Nagata. Director: Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenwriter: Yoshikata Yoda, Kenji Mizoguchi. Based on a novel by Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin. Cinematographer: Minoru Miki. Cast: Isuzu Yamada, Yoko Umemura, Benkei Shiganoya, Kazuko Hisano, Eitarô Shindô. 35mm, b/w, in Japanese with English subtitles, 96 min.
