Utamaro and His Five Women

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

1945 / 94min / 35mm

In making a film from Kanji Kunieda’s fictionalized account of the life of Kitagawa Utamaro, a ukiyo-e woodblock portraitist and painter of the 18th century, Mizoguchi—an avid Sunday painter—by all accounts was taking on a subject dear to himself. Utamaro, played here by Minosuke Bandō, made his name with portraits of women, and his relations with a quintet of his devoted courtesans/models is at the center of this picture. Just as Mizoguchi struggled for creative freedom, both under the wartime government and American Occupational forces, the Utamaro of his film similarly attracts the censure of a local magistrate. A rich and sensual rumination on artistic creation and the various forms of service and submission that—at least under the social structure depicted—it demands.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters