A Geisha is a direct title, and A Geisha is a direct movie. It follows a geisha training a much younger woman in the trade, and then once they're both geishas, the younger one starts to doubt certain traditions within such a lifestyle, and there's a little conflict that comes from all that, though it mostly stays surprisingly grounded throughout. Not a lot happens, as seems to be the case with a good many Kenji Mizoguchi films I've seen, but its simplicity tends to work nonetheless.
I wasn't in the ideal mood to watch a movie of this kind tonight, but there was still enough to appreciate here. Tackling this kind of premise at all in the 1950s feels a little shocking to me, and I can compare that feeling to the one I got last night watching another ahead-of-its-time film from the same decade: Tea and Sympathy.
As for Mizoguchi films, I feel like this might've been one of his better ones. I'm never really itching to dive back into his filmography wholeheartedly, but I find Japanese cinema interesting enough that I guess, in time, I'll continue chipping away at it (Sansho the Bailiff remains the best, at least to me... maybe my coldest take ever).
I wasn't in the ideal mood to watch a movie of this kind tonight, but there was still enough to appreciate here. Tackling this kind of premise at all in the 1950s feels a little shocking to me, and I can compare that feeling to the one I got last night watching another ahead-of-its-time film from the same decade: Tea and Sympathy.
As for Mizoguchi films, I feel like this might've been one of his better ones. I'm never really itching to dive back into his filmography wholeheartedly, but I find Japanese cinema interesting enough that I guess, in time, I'll continue chipping away at it (Sansho the Bailiff remains the best, at least to me... maybe my coldest take ever).