“This fictionalised account of the life of kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke - toppled from stardom by an illicit affair, finally reaching maturity through his lover's self-sacrifice - arguably marks the peak of Mizoguchi's art. Apart from the three scenes on the kabuki stage, the film is constructed in ‘sequence-shots,' long, mobile takes that refuse ‘natural' continuities and instead create a delicately artificial mesh of cross-rhythms and modulations. The plot premises are angrily feminist.” --Tony Rayns, National Film Theatre (London) .
The first and only surviving film of a trilogy Mizoguchi made about Meiji-period theater, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums was unseen in the West until quite recently. The difficulty of finding contemporary subjects acceptable to the increasingly watchful military government is held by some critics to be the inspiration for this turning away from the “social tendency” subjects of Mizoguchi's mid-'30s films. Nonetheless, it was to Meiji Era subjects (1868-1912) that he was repeatedly drawn thoughout his career. In a famous quote, he spoke of its appeal: “Let us say that a man like me is always tempted by the climate of beauty in this era.”
This long, complex work marked Mizoguchi's first use of his one shot/one scene approach to mise en scène: the film has about one-quarter the number of shots in a “normally” edited film.

(Story of the Last Chrysanthemums will be repeated Monday, August 17, at 7:00.)