Tribute to Kenji Mizoguchi 2017 / Shin Heike monogatari / Japan 1955
A young samurai rises to power in the 12th-century struggles between land-owning nobles and the Buddhist clergy – only to be undone by his own arrogance and vanity. The control of colour and design (scrupulously researched, as usual) and vivid performances from a large ensemble cast make sense of the complicated historiography.
The better of the two films Mizoguchi made in colour, this adaptation of a rather pulpy magazine serial was intended by Daiei to launch a series: two more episodes (by other directors) followed. Ichikawa Raizo, soon the company’s top star, headlines as Kiyomori, a young samurai who rises to power in the 12th-century struggles between land-owning nobles and the Buddhist clergy – only to be undone by his own arrogance and vanity. Whatever Mizoguchi may have felt about directing a company assignment rather than a project of his own choosing, he approached the story with the same seriousness he brought to his personal films. The control of colour, design (scrupulously researched, as usual) and staging matches his familiar high standards, and he makes sense of the complicated historiography by drawing vivid performances from a large ensemble cast. Mizoguchi’s only regret was that he couldn’t shoot it in CinemaScope.
Tony Rayns
108 min / Color, DCP
Director Kenji Mizoguchi
/ Screenplay Yoshikata Yoda, Masashige Narusawa, Hisaichi Tsuji podle stejnojmenného románu / based on the novel of the same name by Eiji Yoshikawa
/ Dir. of Photography Kazuo Miyagawa
/ Music Fumio Hayasaka, Masaru Sato
/ Editor Kanji Suganuma
/ Art Director Hiroshi Mizutani
/ Producer Masaichi Nagata
/ Production Daiei, Kyoto
/ Cast Raizo Ichikawa, Michiyo Kogure, Eijiro Yanagi, Yoshiko Kuga, Eitaro Shindo
/ Sales Kadokawa Corporation
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