Any fan of classic Japanese cinema is no doubt aware, that the post-war filmography of director Mizoguchi Kenji forms a steady line of Japan's finest film-making. The highs of this canon are of such importance, that the lesser entries often get sidelined in the conversation, such as "Musashino fujin" (The Lady of Musashino, 1951). The lesser films of Mizoguchi are much different from, say, the lesser films of Naruse. Naruse's weaker films are "soft throughs", which usually just fail to make an impact. Mizoguchi's weaker ones are "stray bullets", which often include his fantastic visuals, but due to poorly fleshed out morals end up making statements, that probably weren't their initial target.
Directly after the war, Mizoguchi was in a difficult spot. He did not really know what kinds of films he should be making in the post-war period, with the SCAP censors breathing down the necks of Japan's film-makers. His initial answer was three films, that are now known as his feminist trilogy: "Josei no shori" (The Victory of the Women, 1946), "Joyû Sumako no koi" (The Love of Actress Sumako, 1947) and "Waga koi wa moenu" (Flame of My Love, 1949). All bio-pics of important Japanese women, all starring Tanaka Kinuyo, an important Japanese woman herself. The films were receive unevenly, though for myself I consider the last one to be among my favorite Mizoguchi films. Scholars now view these to be the most radically feminist works made in the post-war period, though other directors too pushed the limits as the SCAP censors really liked films that challenged the patriarchy.
After these works, and before his biggest masterpieces, "Musashino fujin" seems like a transitional work: a reaction to the former trilogy that isn't all-that-well thought-out. What Mizoguchi seems to be trying to do is highlighting the double standards in Japanese marriage culture. The film opens with the war still raging on, but quickly time jumps to late 1940's. Tanaka plays Michiko, a daughter of a traditional (former) samurai family, who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a professor Akiyama (Mori Masayuki). Akiyama is a man, who has a somewhat twisted concept of modernity, based heavily on the works of Stendhal, that he translates to Japanese and then lectures about. He views adultery to be rebellion against society's ways, and tries to romance every woman that comes his way. The Akiyamas do not have children, though Michiko's parents wished for a continuation of the family line before passing. Michiko's cousin Tsutomu (Katayama Akihiko) returns from the war, and then moves in with the couple. Gradually, he starts to develop feelings for our leading lady, and the pieces have been set for a tale of moral confusion.
The film points out that Japan decriminalized female adultery in 1947. The whole society seems to be at a transitional point, and the characters must make difficult decisions about how they choose to act, also for the sake of future. Ideally, the film would be championing the equality of the spouses and their rights. Wives should treat their husbands well, but husbands should do the same. This doesn't really come across from the final film. The film, like so many by Mizoguchi, does make us see the unfair position of the wife, but it struggles to move past this. It paints a terrible family situation, but seems unsure, whether tradition or modernity should be the direction for the characters in their actions.
The film manages to relay, that marriage is not a light issue, and neither should adultery be. But in the end, which I will not spoil, the film's stance about marriage and divorce seems highly problematic, specially for modern audiences. I realize that a "happy ending" would be very un-Japanese, but the message comes out in a way, that I doubt it was intended. There is also this European styled "force of destiny" thing playing in the background, which ideally would give weight to the narrative, but now stresses the negative outcome. Like I said, Mizoguchi's films struggle with such big moral questions, that the lesser ones do seem like stray bullets that hit places that aren't ideal.
I think this film doesn't work as a narrative, which can also be contributed to the novel that it was based on. That is not to say there aren't good things in the film. From the first shot, the cinematography is wonderful, as it is in all post-war Mizoguchi. The performances are good, though for an actress of Tanaka's caliber this is not a stand-out. In the early 1950's, there was a streak of films that looked at wives not just as mothers, but as unhappy individuals trapped in stale marriages. Naruse made a bunch of them, and just a year before this Mizoguchi film, Tanaka had played another childless mother in a loveless marriage, who meets a love interest from her past in Ozu's "Munekata kyodai" (The Munekata Sisters, 1950). Neither film is as good as you would expect from the director, but thankfully Mizoguchi's next five years of films would make his filmography a treasure of world cinema.
