Release Date: November 6, 2018
Prices and Links:
Criterion - $31.96
Amazon - N/A
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Actors: Ichirô Sugai, Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyôko Kagawa, Eitarô Shindô, Eitarô Ozawa
One of a string of late-career masterworks made by Kenji Mizoguchi in the early 1950s, A Story from Chikamatsu (a.k.a. The Crucified Lovers) is an exquisitely moving tale of forbidden love struggling to survive in the face of persecution. Based on a classic of eighteenth-century Japanese drama, the film traces the injustices that befall a Kyoto scroll maker’s wife and his apprentice after each is unfairly accused of wrongdoing. Bound by fate in an illicit, star-crossed romance, they go on the run in search of refuge from the punishment prescribed them: death. Shot in gorgeous, painterly style by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this subtly sensuous indictment of societal oppression was heralded by Akira Kurosawa as a “great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.”
SPECIAL FEATURES
Prices and Links:
Criterion - $31.96
Amazon - N/A
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Actors: Ichirô Sugai, Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyôko Kagawa, Eitarô Shindô, Eitarô Ozawa
- Japan
- 1954
- 102 minutes
- 1.37:1
- Japanese
- Spine #949
One of a string of late-career masterworks made by Kenji Mizoguchi in the early 1950s, A Story from Chikamatsu (a.k.a. The Crucified Lovers) is an exquisitely moving tale of forbidden love struggling to survive in the face of persecution. Based on a classic of eighteenth-century Japanese drama, the film traces the injustices that befall a Kyoto scroll maker’s wife and his apprentice after each is unfairly accused of wrongdoing. Bound by fate in an illicit, star-crossed romance, they go on the run in search of refuge from the punishment prescribed them: death. Shot in gorgeous, painterly style by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this subtly sensuous indictment of societal oppression was heralded by Akira Kurosawa as a “great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.”
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with actor Kyoko Kagawa
- Mizoguchi: The Auteur Behind the “Metteur-en-scène,” a new illustrated audio essay by film scholar Dudley Andrew
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Haden Guest
