With the pandemonium of war as a looming presence in their lives, in 16th-century Japan, the potter Genjuro and his wife long to be "rich and safe." But things are never that simple. Artistic vanity draws Genjuro into the paradisical realm of a phantom princess. In a parallel tale, Genjuro's brother-in-law Tobei, out for military glory, achieves a general's rank for his fraudulent exploits-another acrid apparition. For our 1986 series, Ghosts and Demons in Japanese Cinema, we noted that, in Ugetsu, the all-too-real and the supernatural move steadily toward one another; a boat ride on foggy waters foreshadows the horizontal unity Mizoguchi will give his two worlds. For, just as his images overflow with life-characters forever running off toward more life outside the frame-so this reality flows into the phantom universe as well. Mizoguchi builds an eerie other world entirely out of what he is given in this one: shadows and lighting, decor and texture, and the graceful chicanery of human desire. The structure of this sublime film is closely related to that of classical Noh drama, but Ugetsu has links to the upheaval of postwar Japan.