DVD of the Week: “Street of Shame”

What does it mean that I remembered Kenji Mizoguchi’s last film, the black-and-white “Street of Shame,” from 1956 (he died that year, at the age of fifty-eight), which I discuss in this clip, as being in color? Did the flamboyant performance of Machiko Kyo as the brazen, Westernized prostitute Mickey conjure the lurid colors of her cheap finery? Did the shots of the street, home to brothels, suggest the chaotic palette of neon signs? Did the grim dwelling of Hanae (Michiyo Kogure), her ailing husband, and her baby son evoke the brown, dry wood with quiet touches of decorative relief? Did the shiny suits of the salaryman who ruined himself to slake his lust and chase his dream of possessing the mercenary Yasumi (Ayako Wakao) seem bluish-gray, or did the hair ornaments of the women in the house seem to glint with lacquered orange-red? I remembered the over-all palette as a garish, faded red; it may be a false association with the cliché of the red-light district—or a true association with the movie’s documentary immediacy. Mizoguchi is one of the very greatest political filmmakers; his characters’ passions and sufferings are anchored, both visually and textually, in the historical moment that they exemplify, but—whatever his movies’ abstractions, of form, tone, or story—he wrenches their moral crises into a present-day, real-time challenge.