Benshi Performance by Midori Sawato

Introduced by Linda Williams

Linda Williams is Director of the UC Berkeley Film Studies Program.

(Taki no shiraito, a.k.a. Cascading White Threads, White Threads of the Waterfall). In this Mizoguchi film of delicate passion and crushing irony, the actress Takako Irie (also the film's producer) offers one of her most memorable creations: Taki, the eponymous "water magician" in a traveling stage show. Lonely but large-hearted, Taki is given to generosity that flies in the face of wisdom. When she inadvertently causes a young coach driver to lose his job, she insists on making amends by putting him through law school - but not before she has seduced him. Their marvelous love out of time, beside a bridge in the fog, is in studied contrast to Mizoguchi's view of the Meiji era: women sacrifice so men can act. This man will eventually sit in judgment of his benefactor. From the offstage world of the itinerant troupe to the chaos of a wagon trip caught in crazy camera, the film itself has a charm of immediacy to match Taki's impetuous humanity.