Princess Yang Kwei Fei

Emperor and concubine: Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyo

Tubi is streaming a batch of films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, a master director whose work is neglected in America. All his films are worth seeing, but I particularly urge you to watch such masterpieces as Sisters of the Gion (1936) and Ugetsu (1953) while you can. A masterpiece new to me was Princess Yang Kwei Fei from 1955. The film, in spectacular color, is a historical romance that verges on tragedy. Kwei Fei (Machiko Kyo) is a country bumpkin cousin in the powerful Yang clan. Kwei Fei goes from being a scullery maid to consort for the Emperor, helped along by ambitious men who seek advancement. Once Kwei Fei is ascendent, the Yang clan overreaches and provokes a bloody popular uprising. Kwei-Fei pays the ultimate price in the most elegant and memorable execution scene since Marlene Dietrich's in Dishonored. 

The narrative is based on the legend of the last Chinese Emperor of the T'ang dynasty and his concubine. The English title of this film is misleading in that Kwei Fei never becomes a princess or an empress. Mizoguchi filmed this foreign tale in Hong Kong in the studios of producer Run Run Shaw. The pairing of Kyo and Mori, the leads of Ugetsu which nabbed a Silver Lion at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, seemed to guarantee some kind of international return. Mizoguchi could not help but make a Mizoguchi film and deviated from the 8th Century CE Chinese chronicles and his screenwriter's efforts. Mizoguchi's Kwei Fei is far more idealized than the historical figure, far more a victim of male machinations in an age where women are bartered off by their clans. Kwei Fei's frankness about being a puppet manipulated by her clan endears her to the Emperor who is sick of toadies.

The other bind between the two is music and the use of music helps balance the film's bleakness. Particularly memorable is a festival scene in which the two lovers get a respite from their troubles by sampling street food and partying with the peasantry. However, the Emperor's love of music is a symbol of his indolence and augurs his downfall. He will shirk his official duties to comingle with his muses. The vibrant story book sets seem off-putting, but ultimately is affecting in mapping the plush artifice of the Emperor's cocoon. Certainly the bathing scene in Princess Yang Shei Fei signals a world of utter decadence that is due to be upended.

Mizoguchi works at a deliberate pace, refrains from depictions of violence, eschews spastic tracking and even close-ups: thus, he stands a world apart from popular commercial filmmaking. Characters move through his frame surrounded by screens, curtains, sliding doors, scrims, drapes, and arranged flowers. By film's end, these are all dust or in tatters. Andrew Sarris summed up the film as "Beauty and memory and vanity." I would add transience. On that note, I mourn the death of David Bordwell, a vibrant writer and scholar who was a great champion of Mizoguchi and film in general.