SOURCE : "Kenji Mizoguchi," in Film Directors, Kodansha International Ltd., 1978, pp. 33-68.

In the following essay, Bock provides a biographical overview of Mizoguchi's work, focusing especially on the director's ambiguous political sympathies and their reflection in his work.

As evasive as he was redoubtable, Kenji Mizoguchi has left behind him not only some of the most pictorially exquisite films in the world, but lingering questions about the relationship between his personal life and ideals and these haunting masterpieces. One of the earliest Japanese filmmakers, with a directing career that began in 1923, at the time of his death in 1956 he had made 85 films of which only 30 are extant today. His works from 1952 on made him one of the first Japanese directors to be reckoned with internationally.

After The Life of Oharu won him the International Director's Prize at the 1952 Venice Film Festival, "Mizo" became an idol of the incipient French...