“Based on ‘The Legend of the Grand Scroll-Maker' by Chikamatsu, the renowned seventeenth-century writer for the puppet theater, this is the story of an illicit love between a merchant's wife and her husband's servant in the days when the punishment for adultery was crucifixion. Here Mizoguchi is at his most painterly, particularly in the two processions which frame the film, and in the scenes of the lovers' flight from their pursuers.
“Chikamatsu's puppet play was based on an actual event.... Nonetheless, Mizoguchi and Yoda make significant departures from their famous sources. The attention paid to Mohei at work as an artist and craftsman will come as no surprise to viewers familiar with the emphasis on art as work in Ugetsu and Five Women Around Utamaro, among others.... For Chikamatsu, the point is fatality.... For Mizoguchi, on the other hand, his lovers are right in the tradition of the romantic outlaw couple; indeed Osan and Mohei are only a gun barrel away from such film noir protagonists as Bowie and Keechie or Bonnie and Clyde.” --Peter Scarlet

The following is the longer unpublished original note:

“Based on ‘The Legend of the Grand Scroll-Maker' by Chikamatsu, the renowned seventeenth-century writer for the puppet theater, this is the story of an illicit love between a merchant's wife and her husband's servant in the days when the punishment for adultery was crucifixion. Here Mizoguchi is at his most painterly, particularly in the two processions which frame the film, and in the scenes of the lovers' flight from their pursuers.
“Chikamatsu's puppet play was based on an actual event, which also served as the basis for a story by Saikaku, author of the source novel for Mizoguchi's Life of O-Haru. This narrative, ‘The Almanac-Maker's Tale,' provides many of the film's most important elements, notably its tragic ending, which is not in Chikamatsu.
“Nonetheless, Mizoguchi and Yoda make significant departures from their famous sources. The attention paid to Mohei at work as an artist and craftsman will come as no surprise to viewers familiar with the emphasis on art as work in Ugetsu and Five Women Around Utamaro, among others. Equally important is the film's invention of the character of Ishun, the husband. This memorably self-involved lout (played, as so often in Mizoguchi's films, by Eitaro Shindo) seems to represent all of society's greed and self-interest, against which his lovers - in one of the screen's most memorable depictions of ‘amour fou' - can only struggle for a moment. For Chikamatsu, the point is fatality: one of his characters says, ‘What we suffer now was preordained from the beginning of the world.' For Saikaku, it's the violation of the social order, which he condemns despite his sympathy for the outlaws. For Mizoguchi, on the other hand, his lovers are right in the tradition of the romantic outlaw couple; indeed Osan and Mohei are only a gun barrel away from such film noir protagonists as Bowie and Keechie or Bonnie and Clyde.” --Peter Scarlet