The Life of Oharu

One of the great works from the greatest of Japanese directors, this episodic, tragic melodrama traces the life of a woman living under the severe moral code of the Genroku era in late 17th-century Japan. Played by Kinuyo Tanaka (who appeared in 11 Mizoguchi films and later became the first woman to direct a Japanese film), Oharu suffers a catalogue of injustices, most of them arbitrary and accidental, others of her own doing. The film, which won the Silver Lion at Venice in 1952, is informed by a Buddhist view of the world that acknowledges the impermanence of everything, especially happiness. Shot in long, beautiful takes, it is more devastating than depressing.