THE CRUCIFIED LOVERS: A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU

A Poignant Late-Career Mizoguchi

Venue(s): National Film Center
May 17, 2017: 15:00
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: www.momat.go.jp/english/fc/exhibition/beautyoffilm-2017-5/
Theater website: www.momat.go.jp/english/fc/
Tariff: General: ￥520 / Students: ￥310 / Seniors: ￥310

Title: 近松物語 (Chikamatsu Monogatari)
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi (溝口健二)
Duration: 102 min

Tokyo’s National Film Center has just reopened after refurbishments, and here’s a great reason to drop by: a one-time-only English-subtitled screening of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 classic The Crucified Lovers: A Story from Chikamatsu, starring the inimitable — and still active — Kyoko Kagawa.

Set in 17th-century Japan and drawn from the repertory of Bunraku puppet theater, Chikamatsu is a haunting tale of doomed love between a merchant’s wife, Osan (Kagawa, in her first major role) and her husband’s employee, Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa), in an era when the punishment for adultery was crucifixion.

Nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, the luminous black-and-white film is ultimately a cautionary tale about morality and fate, as the lovers’ true feelings for each other emerge only after they have been accused of infidelities they never actually committed.