The better of the two films Mizoguchi made in colour, this adaptation of a rather pulpy magazine serial was intended by Daiei to launch a series: two more episodes (by other directors) followed. Ichikawa Raizo, soon the company’s top star, headlines as Kiyomori, a young samurai who rises to power in the 12th-century struggles between land-owning nobles and the Buddhist clergy – only to be undone by his own arrogance and vanity. Whatever Mizoguchi may have felt about directing a company assignment rather than a project of his own choosing, he approached the story with the same seriousness he brought to his personal films. The control of colour, design (scrupulously researched, as usual) and staging matches his familiar high standards, and he makes sense of the complicated historiography by drawing vivid performances from a large ensemble cast. Mizoguchi’s only regret was that he couldn’t shoot it in CinemaScope.