Ozu and Kurosawa are rightly celebrated master directors, but Mizoguchi is deep cut Japanese cinema (partly because his films are harder to source), and this film – known as The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Zangiku monogatari) – is his early masterpiece. While the pacing may be slow and some of the cuts clumsy, this is still by far the greatest pre-WWII Japanese film I’ve ever seen, closely followed by Ozu's I Was Born, But...
Mizoguchi shows off traditional Japan in all its glory. The story focuses on Kiku, who doesn’t have the acting chops of his father, and everyone knows it but him – until his family’s wet nurse Otoku reveals all to him. There’s a strangely shot scene at the start of the film featuring a conversation through the slats of a fence at a geisha house, where Kiku's acting troupe are gossiping and being rude about his acting before realising he’s in the room next door.
Mizoguchi uses nice special effects for the fireworks and there's a lovely scene involving Kiku and Otoku sharing a water melon. For Kiku, Otoku’s honesty is likened to "drinking water from a cool valley stream after a long hike in summer", but their blossoming relationship causes Otoku's dismissal from the family. The location for the scene of their secret rendez-vous is gorgeous, and what we see is a love story across the class divide, the son of a famous actor and the daughter of a poor painter.
Kiku gets a stern telling off from his father and mother, who tell him he’s naive and too trusting. The film sets up an interesting conflict about the nature of women, whether society believes they are all calculating and shallow or whether they are capable of honesty and true emotion. It's interesting to see how Mizoguchi shoots the scene of Kiku begging his father to let him marry Otoku, showing the reaction of his mother and brother in a separate room rather than Kiku and his father.
Cast out by his family, Kiku takes the train to Osaka to try and make a success of his acting career on his own terms. The couple reunite when Otoku seeks him after a play and encourages him to keep acting, and they soon start living together. Then the shock death of famous old actor Tamizo rings out round all the Dotonbori theatres and, as a result, Kiku is offered a new role with a travelling theatre company. We then quickly jump to four years later and Kiku looking downcast about his career. His relationship with Otoku is falling apart and, in a last humiliation, his theatre company is disbanded.
A desperate Otoku goes to visit Kiku’s brother, saying that the young master has suffered but that this experience has improved his art. His brother stresses how family name is so important in Kabuki theatre and suggests they offer Kiku a role... but this must come at the cost of separation from Otoku. An hour and a half after the opening scene, we finally again see Kiku on stage at a prestigious Kabuki theatre in Tokyo. It’s a lovely shot from the back of the theatre overlooking the appreciative crowd.
The message throughout the film is of talent not being enough, that you need pedigree to make it to the top – it seems Mizoguchi is commenting on the Japanese society of his time. The film is also about the marginalisation of women, especially those from lower class backgrounds.
The film’s ending is genuinely touching when Kiku’s father redeems himself by recognising the importance of Otoku to saving his son’s career, telling him to go visit her on her deathbed rather than take part in the river procession. Otoku's sense of self-sacrifice is clear in that she’d be happy to die knowing Kiku had become a magnificent actor. His last bittersweet words to her are: "Wait for me".
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