Sisters of the Gion
                                      
Director:  Kenji Mizoguchi
Year: 1936
Rating: 7.5
Director Kenji Mizoguchi said that 1936 was a turning point for him cinematically. He had been directing films since the early 1920's (most of them lost) but had just finally moved away from silent films to talkies with this one and Osaka Elegy. He has come to be classed in the same category as Ozu and Kurosawa as the top three great Japanese directors of the Golden Age. This film utilizes themes that Mizoguchi would go back to often. That of society and men repressing and exploiting females - and having the film set among geishas or prostitutes. This came right out of his own life. He was brought up in very poor circumstances - his father's store went bankrupt as does one of the characters here - and they sold their daughter into the floating world - the Pleasure Gardens - to be trained as a geisha. When she grew up and acquired a patron, she helped finance her brother's schooling. Mizoguchi in his early twenties was to spend considerable time frequenting geisha houses and bars. So, he knew this world when he filmed stories of it. The men, the women, the interactions, the drinking and the misery of many of the women.



In 1936 Japan like everywhere was in the middle of the Depression and times were tough for many people. The story takes place in Gion, a neighborhood famous at the time for its many geisha houses in Kyoto. The film begins with a tracking shot of men bidding for furniture and other items at an auction. The camera finally arrives at a group of people who are having to auction all of their possessions off because Furusawa's dry cleaning business has gone broke. As has he. His wife complains that it is humiliating that she has to go back to the small town with nothing. Furusawa (Benkei Shiganoya) tells her to get lost and goes to stay with Umekichi (Yôko Umemura), a geisha who lives in her small rambling bar-home that she shares with her sister O-Mocha (Isuzu Yamada) who is also a geisha. Furusawa had been Umekichi's patron - supporting her - but now he is broke and can't help. But she is a kind soul and invites him to stay anyways. An obligation she tells her sister. She feels a sense of loyalty towards him and as we see later is actually in love with him.



O-Mocha is a great film character - westernized and educated in a public school as opposed to her sister.  She is cynical, bitter, hates the life she leads and declares to her sister that men are the enemies. Later she cries "Why do there have to be such things as geishas". She is also a wonderful manipulator and drives the narrative as she plays with men like spinning tops. She persuades Kimura who is a clerk in a fancy kimono shop to make one free for her sister so that she can go to a large party where geishas will tend to the men. She next works cleverly to get her sister a new patron - then when the boss of Kimura comes over to chastise her, she uses sweet words like a sorceress to bring him into her circle.



But this is the life of lower-class geishas and society has a way of taking away whatever they manage to grab. Still, one senses, that though they are beaten down, they will keep coming back because geishas are tough and resilient. And there is always hope for the next time. A terrific film - comic at times and heartbreaking at others. The existing copy runs about 70-minutes but it seems that there are lost scenes that would take it to 95-minutes, but it doesn't feel as if anything is missing.  -