Mizoguchi's films are capable, I think, of teaching life lessons without preaching or grandstanding. This film could cause a male chauvinist to join a consciousness-raising make sensitivity group. In a simple,understated way, the film outlines the tyrannies that made happiness almost impossible for women, not only in feudal Japan, but all over the world. It comments on the use of women's bodies as sex objects and baby-making machines, with no regard for women's minds or feelings. Notice, by the way, that Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka)is supposed to age from 18 to 50-and she really seems to age although makeup in the 1950s was not as advanced an art as it is now. The aging process is achieved through Tanaka's acting. And if she does not seem to us to be quite the ravaged old "witch" that one of her customers claims she is, then so much the better to let us know that she is being judged by an insensitive society.
Review of The Life of Oharu
