Take a basic narrative formula—an opportunity for escape is snatched away at the last minute—and repeat for 136 minutes, and you’ll have something close to a plot synopsis for The Life Of Oharu.

Director Kenji Mizoguchi’s “The Life of Oharu” (1952), newly available in a high-def digital restoration from the Criterion Collection, teems with contradictions. It’s epic yet delicate, set in feudal ...

Criterion's release of Kenji Mizoguchi's 1952 masterpiece, the story of a woman consistently scorned, is cause for celebration. Finally, 17 years into the digital media revolution, a staple of many ...

When director Kenji Mizoguchi died of leukemia in 1956 he was 58 and a leading figure in world cinema, championed by members of the French New Wave, and the recipient of major prizes at the Venice ...

Since silent film first took shape and began to create a cinematic language (at least one for narrative cinema), film theorists have expounded on the beauty of the close-up. It is the apex of emotions ...

Based on Saikaku Ihara's novel, The Life Of Oharu charts the tragic demise of Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) in 17th century Japan. An attendant at the imperial court in Kyoto, she is exiled to the countryside ...

OPENS DECEMBER 19, CERT PG, 133 MINS As a child growing up in poverty, Japanese film-maker Kenji Mizoguchi saw his sister sold as a geisha. The tragedy dominated his career-his movies often ...

Based on Saikaku Ihara's novel, The Life Of Oharu charts the tragic demise of Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) in 17th century Japan. An attendant at the imperial court in Kyoto, she is exiled to the countryside ...

The Life Of Oharu takes its protagonist (Kinuyo Tanaka) from the top of 17th-century Japanese society to the bottom. She begins as a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court, gets sold by her father to ...

A fifty-year-old prostitute who lives on the street and can no longer attract men shuffles to a temple with her humble dignity intact. Most of what follows in Kenji Mizoguchi’s justly legendary 1952 ...