A deeply poignant love-tragedy about two ex-employees of a crooked art dealer: the maid Osen prostitutes herself to support the education of the messenger Sokichi. In later life he’s a prosperous doctor who has forgotten his benefactor, until one night on a rain-swept station platform … Shot silent but released with music and narration, this has the richly expressive visuals of a late silent movie and a daringly convoluted flashback structure. The flashbacks are steeped in the atmosphere of the Meiji era, drawing as much from Mizoguchi’s childhood memories as from the novel by the great Izumi Kyoka, capturing a period that was remote from the audience by 1934. The seminal Mizoguchi theme of a woman sacrificing her own happiness for the man she loves is brought alive by the incandescent Yamada Isuzu (also the star of Osaka Elegy – and later the Lady Macbeth figure in Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood).

Print was provided by National Film Center at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.