Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai / ある映画監督の生涯 溝口健二の記録)

We wish to thank...

the various film magazines and all the writers...

who have helped us make this film.

A kindai eiga kyokai production

kenji mizoguchi the life of a film director

taking parts are:

Kinuyo tanaka, yoshikata yoda

masashige narusawa, kumeko urabe

matsutaro kawaguchi, eiji nakano

eitaro shindo, dai arakawa

takako irie, ganjiro nakamura

masaichi nagata, goro kontaibo

seiichiro uchikawa, kyoko kagawa

michiyo kogure, isuzu yamada

machiko kyo, nobuko otowa

daisuke ito, kazuo miyagawa

yasuzo masumura, ayako wakao

kiyohiko ushihara, kakuko mori

eitaro ozawa, eijiro yanagi, and others.

Photographed by yoshiyuki miyake

sound recording by shinpei kikuchi

edited by mitsuo kondo & keiko fujita

produced and directed by kaneto shindo

at 58 years of age...

on august 24, 1956 at 1:55 am...

kenji mizoguchi died.

Kyoto municipal hospital

i quite understand your wishes...

but we can't allow you to enter the hospital.

It disturbs the patients.

We'll just stay in the passage...

that is all we need.

Kyoto is closely linked with the memory of mizoguchi.

He died in this hospital.

We are making a film of his life...

for the last 10 days we have been interviewing.

I thought one could take only the exterior...

the 4th floor passage is quite enough.

We will just shoot it as is... no lighting.

We won't bother anyone.

No photographers are ever allowed...

no matter who they may be.

The nurses are busy. The patients cannot be disturbed...

private ward 4th floor

kenji mizoguchi's grave

"street of shame"

your films very often were about women...

interview of mizoguchi: February 11, 1950

yes, but at first it was not my idea.

Director minoru murata who died 10 years ago...

was almost a brother to me...

and his films were about...

the world of men.

We couldn't both treat the same subject.

The company gave me the woman's side.

And it was commercially wise.

Then as often happens...

i came to like the idea.

I read in an article you wrote...

after making "osaka elegy" and "sisters of the gion"...

both masterpieces in my opinion...

you felt you had gained a better understanding of human nature.

Youth seems to be a time of action...

making a good film is not directed by reason...

but by an inner passion.

I had gained a deeper understanding of human beings.

Although even now i may not have understood them.

That is how i feel...

that is how i feel...

masashige narusawa: Scenarist

mizoguchi was born over there...

on may 16, 1898...

his parents' first son.

This was the neighborhood.

A temple atmosphere.

After his father's business failed...

they moved to the popular district of asakusa.

He was taught a bit at home...

then went to a public school where he met kawaguchi.

Matsutaro kawaguchi: Writer

is the school where you met still standing?

I have no idea. I must find out.

I passed by the former brothel district of yoshiwara...

the other day and had a look around.

Everything has changed.

Ishihama school founded june 1907

mizoguchi entered the same year.

Nothing forms a man as much as his childhood.

For that reason i'm sure...

we shall never find another director as completely japanese...

as mizoguchi was.

Of course we shall always have good directors.

But none able...

to depict the very essence of our mentality...

and show us as we are.

He was completely japanese.

Typical japanese.

I think it was just that characteristic...

the western cinema world admired in him.

Yes, the special quality...

of his films in which there is no trace of foreign influence.

That is what they admire.

You don't find that in anyone else.

His older sister took care of him. What was she like?

They say their father is from aristocracy or high ranking samurai.

But he ended up a craftsman who roofs a house with slates.

Though i'm not sure.

Their father was a drunkard who did not like to work.

Then viscount matsudaira...

met suzuko, mizoguchi's sister...

was she a geisha in nihonbashi?

That's right.

Where was viscount matsudaira's tokyo house located?

I think he lived in shimoshinmei.

Before that, i think he lived in teppozu.

Wasn't his home town shinshu ueda?

That's correct.

So she became his mistress.

Then she left nihonbashi,

and moved to viscount's mansion in teppozu.

She lived there?

As his mistress, yes.

But didn't she marry him?

Eventually, yes. Legally married.

So she became suzuko matsudaira.

She supported her brother in many ways.

Many of mizoguchi's films depict grudge against a father figure.

None depicts the father favorably.

I think the father in "osaka elegy" is modeled after his own.

Here he passed his early years.

After finishing school he went to morioka...

but he soon came back.

At 17 he worked for a pattern designer...

but he didn't stay.

He enrolled in the painting school of seiki kuroda.

At 19 he worked for a newspaper in kobe...

that lasted a year.

It was by chance he began his cinema career.

He lived near the nikkatsu studios.

He became a friend of an actor...

named tomioka...

who knew wakayama, a director.

He joined nikkatsu very easily.

His ambition was to act but he was made an assistant director,

an errand boy.

It was june 1920. He was 22.

After varied attempts he found his chosen path.

Nikkatsu mukojima studio glass stage

now it is a glass stage, but it was a tent when i started.

There was no glass stage.

Gengo otsubo: Cameraman (nikkatsu)

It was before the age of the glass stage.

Is my story too old?

Not at all. Please go ahead.

Today's lighting is good in its way.

But in the days of the tent, it used to open up when the wind blew.

Even when the tent stayed, the wind blew open the joints...

and let the sunlight in to shine on the stage.

We had to continue shooting that way.

But we naturally wanted to improve,

and the glass stage was built in 1913.

That makes sense.

It was the sunlight.

The sunlight through the glass.

Today artificial lighting is used. There's no glass ceiling.

In the past we shot under the sunlight through the glass.

When the weather...

changes from cloudy to sunny,

each time a cameraman must adjust by himself,

since we did not have assistants back then.

You never know when the sky changes.

There was no motor back then, so with the right hand...

busy rotating the camera, we had to adjust like this.

Panning was done differently, too. Like this, with the left hand...

while the right hand was still rotating.

I think cameramen today are better off. We did everything by ourselves.

From shooting to developing.

Cameramen did everything.

It was a lot of responsibility, and made the job exciting for cameramen.

"What is the result of the scenes i have shot?"

The moment of seeing the developed film is especially exciting.

Since i was developing myself...

i was able to adjust the process based on the condition of the shooting.

How many days did it take to shoot one film?

Probably a week.

That must have felt like a second.

Yeah. But that was the standard back then. 10 days at the most.

Although it took much longer to shoot "dokuro no mai".

Kiyohiko ushihara: Director

i began working at shochiku the year it was founded.

The studio was a tent.

But soon they built a glass studio.

The east and south walls were glass...

the rest was wood.

After they built entirely in glass...

right up to the roof. A square glass box.

What was mizoguchi like?

He was a gentle person.

Really?

He was fond of women and sake, but he was gentle nonetheless.