In college, my film professor, Gilberto Perez (whose book “The Material Ghost,” a treasure trove of insights, was recently voted the most important cinema-studies book of the decade*), taught a class on the political cinema, centered on the films of Sergei Eisenstein, John Ford, and Kenji Mizoguchi. It’s an interesting grouping; I learned quickly to see past stylistic differences to the substance of the films. What’s fascinating about the entirely apt inclusion of Mizoguchi, whose 1948 film “Women of the Night” I discuss in this clip, is that he could equally figure in a class on the lyrical cinema, alongside Max Ophüls and Jean Renoir, or one on the feminist cinema, with Chantal Akerman and Agnès Varda. In short, Mizoguchi is one of the most multifaceted, comprehensive, and analytical directors, which is to say, simply, one of the very best. His work is as lucid and as harsh as it is beautiful. This film, shot largely on location in devastated postwar Osaka, depicts the devastation that the misguided and catastrophic war wrought on its survivors—in body and soul.
*It was tied for most important work in any genre with Jean-Luc Godard’s video series “Histoire(s) du Cinéma.” (Godard was one of Mizoguchi’s great critical champions in the nineteen-fifties.)
