This is it! The final movie in this Criterion Eclipse blog series.
Once again, this Mizoguchi film veers towards kitsch, and I’m not sure why anybody would hail these films as, well, anything to er hail. Is it just because of the exoticism? That seems crass, so I’m sure not, but it’s hard to see anything else to recommend these movies — pedestrian cinematography, preposterous plots, and unconvincing pacing. The performances are pretty good, but with the framing it can be hard to tell sometimes.
The final scene is properly horrifying, though, so:
Street of Shame. Kenji Mizoguchi. 1956.
This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.