The Eclipse Viewer – Episode 48 – Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women [Part 2]

David, Trevor and Scott discuss two films focused on Kenji Mizoguchi's critical examination of prostitution in postwar Japan.

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor is joined by Scott Nye to discuss Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women.

About the films:

Over the course of a three-decade, more than eighty film career, master cineaste Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) would return again and again to one abiding theme: the plight of women in Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of social consciousness—two prewar (Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion), two postwar (Women of the Night, Street of Shame)—Mizoguchi introduces an array of compelling female protagonists, crushed or resilient, who are forced by their conditions and culture into compromising positions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.

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Criterion Explore
Film Reference
IndieWire
I Shoot the Pictures
Madman Entertainment
New York Times
Observations on Film Art
Strictly Film School

Box Set Reviews

Classic Art Films
Los Angeles Times
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies

Women of the Night

David’s Journey Through the Eclipse Series review
Criterion Confessions
Film Sufi
New Yorker

Street of Shame

David’s Journey Through the Eclipse Series review
Criterion Confessions
Electric Sheep
Film Sufi
Japan Times
New Yorker
New York Times (1959)
Senses of Cinema
Wonders in the Dark

Next time on the podcast: Eclipse Series 2: The Documentaries of Louis Malle

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Trevor Berrett ( Twitter / Website )
Scott Nye ( Twitter / Website )