Utamaro and His Five Women ( Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1946)

(Reviewed 5/5 in December 2014 on letterboxd.com)

For once, while watching a Mizoguchi, I wasn't thinking about that glorified long shot aesthetic or mise-en-scene. Perhaps Mizoguchi's finest film featuring naturalistic acting, a strange tragicomic plot and the perverse madness behind an artists pursuit of capturing the soul of his subjects. An unexpected masterpiece.