In a Meiji period setting, around the turn of the presentcentury, Mizoguchi's protagonists are Sumako Matsui, Japan's first modern stageactress, and Hogetsu Shimamura, one of the founders of the Shingeki movementadvocating theatrical realism. Again the subject was made even more attractive tohim by its possibilities for promoting democracy, for Sumako Matsui riskedeverything for a career in the theater and a place for women in an art form thatpreviously had been closed to them. "After opening with a magnificent debate(on whether the meaning of A Doll's House would be compromised if a femaleimpersonator played the lead), Sumako goes on to chronicle the rise of modern,western theater in Japan by focusing on the stormy career of (Sumako Matsui). Thefeminist thrust of the plot is gradually subsumed by the melodrama of Sumako'saffair with her director°which rises to Sirkian heights in its counterpoint oflife with theater." (Tony Rayns)