Anniversary of "the saddest film about the life of a woman"
On April 17, 1952, the movie "Saikaku ichidai onna 西鶴一代女 (The Life of Oharu)" directed by Kenji Mizoguchi was released on the screens of cinemas in Japan.
The plot of the film Kenji Mizoguchi is based on the novel of the Japanese master of the erotic story Ihara Saikaku "The Life of an Amorous Woman". This story was published in 1686. The change in the title of the film compared to the literary source has its own explanation. If in the story of Saikaku, the gradual fall of a court lady from an aristocratic society, first to a concubine, some kind of a surrogate mother, for a noble samurai in need of an heir, then to a courtesan and finally to a street prostitute, occurred as a result of unbridled passion for sex, then in the film of Mizoguchi, as the reasons for this fall, social foundations in general and social conditions of women's life, in particular, in feudal Japan. However, knowing the biography of Mizoguchi, one can understand the reasons for such an interpretation of the story of Saikaku.
Unlike many other masterpieces of Japanese cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi's film "The Life of Oharu" hit the screens of Soviet cinemas under the title "Life without Happiness". But, in 1963 - 11 years after the premiere in Japan. However, this film reached US cinemas even later - in 1964.
The film reviewer of The New York Times, A.H. Weiler, literally the day after the American premiere of the film, devoted an arrogant and condescending review to it, in which he noted:
"As an evocation of a noble-ridden society that took unheeding toll of its lower castes, the film makes a sharp, if obvious, point. But the basic story, slowly unfolded with the majestic solemnity of vignettes on silk screens, is as obvious and lachrymose as a soap opera....As traditional fare "Oharu" is undoubtedly a Japanese dish but it seems highly specialized and exotic for Western tastes.."
Almost half a century later, in 2012, the guru of American film criticism Roger Ebert rated the film "The Life of Oharu" by Kenji Mizoguchi with the maximum 4 stars in his system and included it in his list of "Great Movies". In a review of the film, he noted:
"Here is the saddest film I have ever seen about the life of a woman....To be held up as a moral spectacle is a cruel fate for a woman who has been treated immorally almost every day of her life, and who has always behaved as morally as it was within her power to do."
In August 1952, Kenji Mizoguchi's film "The Life of Oharu" participated in the Venice International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the main prize - the Golden Lion. In my opinion, there were two films worthy of the main prize in the program of this festival - Mizoguchi's picture and René Clément's masterpiece "Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games)". The jury of the film festival, chaired by the Italian film critic Mario Gromo, gave preference to the French film, and, probably, quite rightly. But one of the awards of the festival, the so-called International Award, was still awarded to the Mizoguchi's picture.
Over the past seven decades since the creation of the film, its appeal to ordinary moviegoers has not only not decreased, but, perhaps, even increased. 71% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Kenji Mizoguchi's film "The Life of Oharu" according to FilmGourmand version was 8,006, which allowed it to take 700th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
