“Based on a best-selling novel by Eiji Yoshikawa (itself an adaptation of a famous thirteenth-century chronicle), Mizoguchi's second color film was dismissed by some critics as an uncharacteristic and overcomplicated work. Certainly it has an epic scope rarely attempted by the director, and women appear in it only briefly (though far from unimportantly). Nonetheless, this story of a hero's moral growth fully justifies Andrew Sarris's description as ‘a film that I must call sublime even at the risk of sounding ridiculous.'
“The film begins in 1137 at a time when Japan had two courts, the Emperor's Court and the ex-Emperor's Cloister. The main power is held by the temples, which have thousands of soldier monks. Finding his successor unable to deal with the general lawlessness, the ex-Emperor, who had retired to a life of pious contemplation, resolves to regain power. However, yet another faction appears, the samurai, who although they are professional soldiers, represent a more democratic outlook.” --Peter Scarlet.
“The first shot opens on a view of the distant mountainous horizon, held for a brief moment of majestic calm before craning down into the middle of a vast chaotic marketplace teeming with people. Seldom if ever has a historical period been evoked so vividly as by this image of the brutal, frenzied, and uncertain daily life of twelfth-century Kyoto, on the eve of a struggle between rich and powerful monasteries and the families of samurai upon whom the emperor's authority has increasingly come to depend....” --Michael McKegney