Ugetsu

Wednesday, July 5 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

UGETSU
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi • 1953
In Japanese with English subtitles
While Kenji Mizoguchi’s reputation had been firmly established in the Japanese film industry by the early 1950s, it was the string of films that he directed in the five or so years before his death in 1956 that would cement his legacy with cinephiles worldwide. Key among these was Ugetsu, a genre-defying supernatural romance that would afford the director perhaps the most creative freedom of his career. As civil war rages in Sengoku period Japan, a married potter named Genjūrō travels to sell his wares in a nearby city. There, he meets the mysterious Lady Wakasa and her servant Ukon, sole inhabitants of the haunted Kutsuki manor, and quickly falls under Wakasa’s spell. While marauding soldiers descend upon his home, Genjūrō agrees to marry Wakasa and live at Kutsuki with her, potentially sealing his doom in the process. Unfolding in a series of lengthy shots seemingly unbound by gravity (cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa claimed that 70 percent of the film was shot using a camera crane), Ugetsu has endured as one of cinema’s greatest ghost stories in large part due to how Mizoguchi’s imagery transforms otherwise mundane scenes into something ineffable and otherworldly. A favorite of Jean-Luc Godard, Kelly Reichardt, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and many, many others. (CW)
97 min • Daiei Film • 35mm from Janus Films

Preceded by: 1953 Trailer Reel – Approx. 10 Min – 35mm from Chicago Film Society Collections