(Also known as Cascading White Threads and White Threads of the Waterfall.) The earliest of Mizoguchi's films to have survived in close to its original form, The Water Magician is already characteristic of his style in being a film of delicate passion and crushing irony. Takako Irie, in one of her greatest performances, portrays the star of a traveling show, Taki. Lonely but large hearted, she is given to extreme generosity that flies in the face of wisdom. When she inadvertently causes a young coach driver to lose his job, Taki insists on making amends by putting him through law school, in the process falling hopelessly in love, and hopelessly into debt. When, years later, she kills a loan shark who is still hounding her for money, she is brought to trial before the former student, her former lover, now a judge. "Mizoguchi has given us a woman so human, so flawed, so lovable that we go right on believing in her no matter the conventionality of the plot...He has also given us one of his best controlled, most economical, most justly paced films. From the gliding, intercut opening, a Japanese circus on a hot summer night, through the bold, staring close-ups of the final scenes, he has created an entire world for his heroine to inhabit. Like the real world it is made up of many parts..." (Donald Richie)