Writing
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In 39 interviews with actors and actresses, writers, producers and staff members, interspersed with film excerpts and stills, Shindō recounts the life and career of his friend and mentor Mizoguchi.
A 1946 Japanese film directed by Keigo Kimura.
When a civil war threatens to break out, two geishas flee from their village with aristocrats. During the long journey, the socially inferior women prove to be morally superior to their betters.
Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
In 8th-century China, the Emperor grieves the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their court influence. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen, whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets.
Performing every night for an audience of male admirers, cabaret singer Yuri captures the attention of Yoshio Tsugawa, a motorcycle salesman who becomes hopelessly enchanted by the unattainable star. In his desperation to win her favor, Yoshio deceives his own customers to support Yuri’s glamorous lifestyle, ultimately ending up imprisoned for embezzlement.
Inoue was something of a rarity in the sense, that he was a Shochiku house director who seems to have worked mostly in period films, often with big stars like Hasegawa or Bando. "Sumidagawa", named after the river that runs through Tokyo, is also a period film, but thematically a modern one. All the themes that you associate with the normal Shochiku women's films set in the present day are in this film, just in a different context: love, the planning of a marriage, career, family relations and societal melancholy. There is no action or swordplay.
A university student wants to avenge his sister from a businessman who abandoned her after leaving her pregnant. To do this, he decides to seduce the man’s sister to make him suffer the same fate.
In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.
The tragic loves between a member of the Liberal Party, imprisoned following the Chichibu incident in November 1884, and an actress who resolves to prostitute herself to help him. Considered a lost film.