Next door lives Miyagi's sister, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito) and her impulsive husband Tobei (Eitaro Ozawa), who dreams of leaving behind his life as a poor farmer to become a samurai. Lawless invading troops endanger the area, but instead of protecting their wives, Genjuro and Tobei scheme to sell pottery at a wartime markup.
Tobei uses his share of the proceeds to become a samurai in the invading army. A fortunate opportunity makes him an officer. He enjoys his new higher station until he encounters his wife Ohama working as a prostitute in a brothel. Because it is a movie, he abandons his position and returns home to farm with Ohama.
Meanwhile, Genjuro does business in a neighbor village, and encounters a beautiful wealthy woman and her aged servant. The woman is Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyô), and her maid is Ukon (Kiue Môri). Lady Wakasa seduces Genjuro into marriage, but he soon meets a priest, Sugisaku Aoyama, who warns him that Lady Wakasa is a spirit.
Genjuro eventually returns home, to find his wife and son seemingly alive and well. Miyagi greets him warmly, but the next morning Genjuro learns that she has been killed by soldiers, and he had met her spirit, who continues to benevolently oversee the family.
Based on stories by 18th century Japanese author Akinari Ueda. Ueda's stories, in turn, were influenced by Japanese folk tales, akin to the central Europe and the Brothers Grimm.
How others will see it. Ugetsu is the middle of three films by director Mizoguchi that were hailed in the West. The others were The Life of Oharu (1952) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). Of the three, Ugetsu is the most popular today, with an imdb.com user vote total about equal to that of Oharu and Sansho combined. All three were nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, along with his final movie, Street of Shame (1956). The latter's nomination may have been influenced by Mizoguchi's untimely death from leukemia in 1956 at the age of 58.
The success of Ugetsu was such that it actually received a nomination (for black-and-white costumes) from the then-ethnocentric Academy Awards. The film remains highly regarded today, as it holds a lofty 8.2 (out of 10) user rating at imdb.com. User reviews hail the movie and note its obvious moral: remain faithful to your wife, and place family above adventure, ambition, and the pursuit of wealth.
The samurai genre remains popular in the West, and the most popular Japanese films from the 1950s and 1960s are samurai movies. Except perhaps among the younger set, who prefers to see Godzilla battle Mothra, Rodan, or Ghidorah.
How I felt about it. Mizoguchi is often compared to Japanese director contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Yasujir&oacure; Ozu. Ozu also died young, at age 60, while Kurosawa lived to a ripe age, making films in six different decades.
Kurosawa is regarded as the greatest among the trio, and undoubtedly his long career helps his cause. But even while Ozu and Mizoguchi were alive, Kurosawa was seen as better. If imitation is the best form of flattery, Hollywood agreed, since The Magnificent Seven (1960) is based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954).
Indeed, though Ozu and Mizoguchi were earnest and skilled, their films as a whole lack the genius associated with Kurosawa's best films. But comparing every Japanese director with Kurosawa is like comparing every American animation studio to Disney during Walt Disney's lifetime. It's not much of a contest.
Ugetsu is a highly watchable film, but we suspect that the insipid Tobei would reject his prostitute wife and continue to enjoy the status of an officer to a warlord. Genjuro would have been kept from returning to the village by Lady Wakasa and her dutiful servant. We doubt that Ohama has experience as a boat rower, and for that matter we doubt that women return from the dead to mess with the heads of ordinary men.