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 that frame the film, and in the scenes of the lovers' flight from their pursuers. Chikamatsu's seventeenth-century puppet play was based on an actual event, which also served as the basis for a story by Saikaku that provides many of the film's most important elements. But Mizoguchi and screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda make significant departures from their famous sources. For Chikamatsu, the point is fatality; for Saikaku, the violation of the social order, which he condemns despite his sympathy for the outlaws. For Mizoguchi, the lovers are right in the tradition of the romantic outlaw couple; Osan and Mohei are only a gun barrel away from such film noir protagonists as Bowie and Keechie or Bonnie and Clyde.