Special Admission Applies
$13 General / $9 BAM/PFA Members & UC Berkeley Students / $11 UC Berkeley Faculty & Staff, Non-UC Berkeley Students, 65+, Disabled

There will be a fifteen-minute intermission between parts one and two

(Genroku Chushingura, a.k.a. The Loyal 47 Ronin). The vengeance of the retainers of Lord Asano in 1703 following his forced hara-kiri formed the basis for numerous stage and screen productions. Mizoguchi's version was based on a kabuki play by Seika Mayama, an austere and meditative interpretation centering on the personal drama of Kuranosuke Oishi, who suffered having to play a false role (the dissipated roué) while awaiting the protracted day of vengeance. Mizoguchi was given a lavish budget-during the war, no expense was spared to invoke the spirit of “the loyal 47”-but the joke was on the government. “The tone is intriguingly ambiguous: although the sentiments seem to accord with the military's concept of bushido, the warrior's code of devotion, Mizoguchi consistently avoids the large gestures and obvious action scenes and invests the story with a subdued, elegiac feeling for both the dead and the living” (John Gillett).